Manage development in a CI/CD workflow with Self-Hosted Runner

In this section you will learn how to manage ongoing development in an automated CI/CD workflow, using GitHub Actions and self-hosted runner.

In the lighting-app console, stop the app (Ctrl+C) if still running.

Prepare repository for workflows

The Matter repository from where the examples are sourced contains very many workflows for rebuilding different configurations. For the convenience of time, let us remove these, and install only the new workflow.

In the lighting-app console, navigate to the .github/workflows directory, and delete all.

    

        
        
            cd ~/connectedhomeip/.github/workflows
rm -rf *.yaml
rm -rf *.yml
ls
        
    

Create a .yml textfile, and copy the below to that file.

    

        
        
            name: Matter_CICD_Demo

on:
  push:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  rebuild_lighting_app:
    runs-on: self-hosted
    steps:
     - uses: actions/checkout@v2
     
     - name: submodules
       run: ./scripts/checkout_submodules.py --shallow --platform linux
       
     - name: bootstrap and build
       run: |
         ./scripts/build/gn_bootstrap.sh
         source scripts/activate.sh
         git clone https://github.com/project-chip/zap.git ./zap
         cd ./zap
         sudo src-script/install-packages-ubuntu
         npm ci
         export ZAP_DEVELOPMENT_PATH=$PWD
         cd ../examples/lighting-app/linux
         gn gen out/debug
         ninja -C out/debug
         
  run_lighting_app:
    needs: rebuild_lighting_app
    runs-on: self-hosted
    steps:
      - name: Run lighting-app for 3 minutes
        run: |
          cd examples/lighting-app/linux
          timeout 180s ./out/debug/chip-lighting-app || code=$?; if [[ $code -ne 124 && $code -ne 0 ]]; then exit $code; fi
        
    

Create GitHub self-hosted runner

Browse to the forked Matter repository in your personal GitHub space.

Navigate to Settings > Actions > Runners, and then click on New self-hosted runner.

Configure for Linux host on ARM64 Architecture (the host of the runner will be the lighting-app Virtual Raspberry Pi 4 instance).

You will see a set of commands (unique to you) to download and configure the runner.

In the lighting-app console, return to your home directory:

    

        
        
            cd ~
        
    

Copy and paste the Download and Configure commands (from GitHub) for your self-hosted runner.

It is OK to select the default options when prompted during configuration.

To keep the console available for later use, run the self-hosted runner agent as a background service (if started, first stop with Ctrl+C):

    

        
        
            sudo ./svc.sh install pi
sudo ./svc.sh start
sudo ./svc.sh status
        
    

In your GitHub repository, you will see your runner listed (Settings > Actions > Runners), with Idle status.

Make a code change

In the lighting-app console, make a code change, for example, editing the output message when light is toggled.

This is in a source file named on-off-server.cpp.

    

        
        
            cd ~/connectedhomeip
nano src/app/clusters/on-off-server/on-off-server.cpp
        
    

Locate the Toggle on/off message (if using nano, use Ctrl+_ to jump to line 175):

    

        
        
                emberAfOnOffClusterPrintln("Toggle ep%x on/off from state %x to %x", endpoint, currentValue, newValue);
        
    

Edit to give a new output message, for example:

    

        
        
                emberAfOnOffClusterPrintln("HELLO WORLD! Toggle ep%x on/off from state %x to %x", endpoint, currentValue, newValue);
        
    

Exit (Ctrl+X) and save your change.

Push changes to GitHub repository and invoke workflow

The workflow contains the below, which tells GitHub to invoke this workflow whenever there is a push to the repository.

    

        
        
            on:
  push:
        
    

To push the changes, in lighting-app console, first enter your GitHub credentials.

    

        
        
            git config --global user.name "YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME"
git config --global user.email YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS
        
    

Ensure you are pushing these changes to your personal forked repository.

    

        
        
            git remote -v 
        
    

Commit the changes to your repository.

    

        
        
            cd ~/connectedhomeip
git add .
git commit -m "delete other workflows, update output message"
git push
        
    

You will be prompted for your GitHub username and Personal Access Token (password).

The workflow contains two jobs, which rebuild, and then run lighting-app:

    

        
        
            jobs:
  rebuild_lighting_app:
...
  run_lighting_app:
        
    

Note that rebuild_lighting_app will take a few minutes to complete, as it must repeat all the initialization steps for the Matter build system.

Follow the workflow progress in GitHub Actions

The workflow does not output on the target, but rather logs to GitHub.

You can follow the workflow steps, and see the output logs in your GitHub repository, under the Actions tab.

After lighting-app is initialized, you can toggle the light with your chip-tool instance as before:

    

        
        
            ./out/debug/chip-tool onoff on 0x11 1
./out/debug/chip-tool onoff off 0x11 1
        
    

Observer your new message in the run_lighting_app log, for example:

    

        
        [TIMESTAMP][INSTANCEID] CHIP:ZCL: HELLO WORLD! Toggle ep1 on/off from state 1 to 0

        
    

The workflow will cleanly terminate lighting-app after 120 seconds.