Talaiot

Talaiot is an extensible library targeting teams using the Gradle Build System. It records build/task duration helping to understand problems of the build and detecting bottlenecks. For every record, it will add additional information defined by default or custom metrics.

Talaiot is compatible with different systems like InfluxDb, Elasticsearch or RethinkDb. You need to use a Plugin to work with Talaiot. You can use the standard plugin, including all the functionality, or if you have a specific requirement with a individual plugin.

Current available plugins:

Once you have Talaiot integrated you can create dashboards using the build information stored:

What is Talaiot?

"... while some certainly had a defensive purpose, the use of others is not clearly understood. Some believe them to have served the purpose of lookout or signalling towers..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talaiot

Table of Contents

1. Setup
2. Snapshots
3. Basic Configuration
4. Talaiot Extension
5. Example: Analyzing Data provided by Talaiot
6. Other Existing Libraries
7. Docs
8. Articles
9. Contributing
10. Contributors
11. Thanks

Setup

Standard Plugin

Kotlin

Using the plugins DSL:

plugins {
  id("com.cdsap.talaiot") version "1.4.2"
}

Using legacy plugin application:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    maven {
      url = uri("https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/")
    }
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath("com.cdsap:talaiot:1.4.2")
  }
}

apply(plugin = "com.cdsap.talaiot")

Groovy

Using the plugins DSL:

plugins {
  id "com.cdsap.talaiot" version "1.4.2"
}

Using legacy plugin application:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    maven {
      url "https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/"
    }
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath "com.cdsap:talaiot:1.4.2"
  }
}

apply plugin: "com.cdsap.talaiot"

Individual Plugins

Each plugin is deployed to the Gradle Plugin Portal using thee following convention:

Kotlin Example Plugin

Using the plugins DSL:

plugins {
  id("com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base") version "1.4.2"
}

Using legacy plugin application:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    maven {
      url = uri("https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/")
    }
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath("com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin:base:1.4.2")
  }
}

apply(plugin = "com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base")

Groovy

Using the plugins DSL:

plugins {
  id "com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base" version "1.4.2"
}

Using legacy plugin application:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    maven {
      url "https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/"
    }
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath ""com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin:base:1.4.2""
  }
}

apply plugin: "com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base"

Snapshots

Include the OJO artifactory oss-snapshot local:

maven ( url = uri("http://oss.jfrog.org/artifactory/oss-snapshot-local") )

Standard Plugin

classpath("com.cdsap:talaiot:1.4.3-SNAPSHOT")

Individual Plugin

classpath("com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin:base:1.4.3-SNAPSHOT")

Talaiot Extension

Metrics

We can include extra information on the build and task tracked data during the build. This information will be added to the default metrics defined.

talaiot {
    metrics {
        // You can add your own custom Metric objects:
        customMetrics(
            MyCustomMetric(),
            // Including some of the provided metrics, individually.
            HostnameMetric()
        )

        // Or define build or task metrics directly:
        customBuildMetrics(
            "kotlinVersion" to $kotlinVersion,
            "javaVersion" to $javaVersion
        )
        customTaskMetrics(
            "customProperty" to $value
        )
    }
}

Read more about it in the Metrics wiki page.

Filters

For every measurement done, Talaiot can filter the tasks tracked to be published. These filters don't apply to GraphPublishers:

For every measurement done, Talaiot can completely skip publishing process. These filters affect all publishers:

Example:

 filter {
     tasks {
         excludes = arrayOf("preDebugBuild", "processDebugResources")
     }
     modules {
         excludes = arrayOf(":app")
     }
     threshold {
         minExecutionTime = 10
     }
     build {
         success = true
         requestedTasks {
             includes = arrayOf(":app:assemble.*")
             excludes = arrayOf(":app:generate.*")
         }
     }
 }

IgnoreWhen

We will use IgnoreWhen when we want to ignore publishing the results of the build. One use case is to ignore it when we are building on CI:

talaiot {
    ignoreWhen {
        envName = "CI"
        envValue = "true"
    }
}

Publishers configuration

The Publisher configuration will change depending on the type of plugin you are using. Standard Plugin provides all the different publisher configurations, for example:

talaiot {
    publishers {
        influxDbPublisher {
            dbName = "tracking"
            url = "http://localhost:8086"
            taskMetricName = "task"
            buildMetricName = "build"
        }

    }
    filter {
        threshold {
            minExecutionTime = 10
        }
    }
}

This configuration would be valid for the InfluxDb Plugin.

InfluxDbPublisher

Talaiot will send to the InfluxDb server defined in the configuration the values collected during the execution

For complete list of tags check: https://github.com/cdsap/Talaiot/blob/master/library/core/talaiot/src/main/kotlin/com/cdsap/talaiot/metrics/BuildMetrics.kt If you need to include custom metrics as tags, you need to use the type Custom

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.influxdb plugins.

RetentionPolicyConfiguration

Retention Policy (RP) describes how long InfluxDB keeps data, how many copies of the data to store in the cluster, and the time range covered by shard groups. RPs are unique per database and along with the measurement and tag set define a series. Since version 1.0.0 we are including by default RP in all the operations included in the publisher. The RetentionPolicyConfiguration includes:

Example of custom RP Configuration:

influxDbPublisher {
  dbName = "xxxxxx"
  url = "xxxxxx"
  retentionPolicyConfiguration {
    name = "customRp"
    duration = "4w"
    shardDuration = "30m"
    replicationFactor = 1
    isDefault = true
  }
}

TaskDependencyGraphPublisher

Talaiot will generate the Task Dependency Graph in the specific format specified in the configuration

This new category of publishers does not require constantly evaluating the builds, that's why there is an extra parameter configuration in the Publisher to ignore the execution unless there is some property enabled. Typical use case is use this publisher and collect the files on CI.

The output will be found "${project.rootDir}/talaiot:

Example:

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.graph plugins.

PushGatewayPublisher

Talaiot will send to the PushGateway server defined in the configuration the values collected during the execution.

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.pushgateway plugins.

JsonPublisher

Talaiot will Publish the results of the build with a json format .

    publishers {
        jsonPublisher = true

    }

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base plugins.

TimelinePublisher

Talaiot will create a PNG file with the detailed information in chronological order by task of the execution in the different workers.

    publishers {
        timelinePublisher = true

    }

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base plugins.

ElasticSearchPublisher

Talaiot will send to the ElasticSearch server defined in the configuration the values collected for tasks and build metrics during the execution in the different workers.

Example:

    publishers {
        elasticSearchPublisher {
          url = "http://localhost:9200"
          taskIndexName = "task"
          buildIndexName = "build"
        }
    }

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.elasticsearch plugins.

HybridPublisher

This Publisher allows composition over publishers to report tasks and build metrics.

Example:

    publishers {
        hybridPublisher {
            taskPublisher = ElasticSearchPublisherConfiguration().apply {
                url = "http://localhost:9200"
                buildIndexName = "build"
                taskIndexName = "task"
            }

            buildPublisher = InfluxDbPublisherConfiguration().apply {
                dbName = "tracking"
                url = "http://localhost:8086"
                buildMetricName = "build"
                taskMetricName = "task"
            }
        }
    }

In this example we are using InfluxDbPublisher to report build metrics and ElasticSearchPublisher to report task metrics.

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot plugin.

RethinkDbPublisher

Talaiot will send to the RethinkDb server defined in the configuration the values collected during the execution

Included in: com.cdsap.talaiot and com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.rethinkdb plugins.

Custom Publishers

Talaiot allows using custom publishers defined by the requirements of your environment, in case you are using another implementation.

talaiot {
    publishers {
        // You can define one or more custom publishers:
        customPublishers(
            MyCustomPublisher()
        )
    }
}

Read more about it in the Publishers wiki page In you are not using additional plugins we recommend to use com.cdsap.talaiot.plugin.base.

Example: Analyzing Data provided by Talaiot

Docker, InfluxDb and Grafana

To have a quick setup to see the possibilities of Talaiot we are providing a Docker image to setup a Grafana + InfluxDb instances(based on this great repo).

Additionally, the Docker image is creating a default database, a provisioned dashboard and the default datasource for InfluxDb. The source is here:

To run the Docker Image:

docker run -d \
  -p 3003:3003 \
  -p 3004:8083 \
  -p 8086:8086 \
  -p 22022:22 \
  -v /var/lib/influxdb \
  -v /var/lib/grafana \
  cdsap/talaiot:latest

You can access to the local instance of Grafana:

http://localhost:3003 root/root

Populating data

If you access to the provisioned Dashboards included in the Docker Image(http://localhost:3003/d/F9jppxQiz/android-task-tracking?orgId=1 and http://localhost:3003/d/WlpZEBRMz/task-cache-info?orgId=1), you will see an empty dashboard like:

To see Talaiot in action, you need to populate the data. We are providing a script to populate data based in the sample project included in the repository. You can execute the script:

bash scripts/populate.sh

The script will download the repository and with the help of Gradle Profiler(https://github.com/gradle/gradle-profiler) will trigger number of builds defined in the scenario file:

assemble {
  tasks = ["clean"]
}
clean_build {
  versions = ["5.1"]
  tasks = ["assemble"]
  gradle-args = ["--parallel"]
  cleanup-tasks = ["clean"]
  run-using = cli
  warm-ups = 20
}

Once is finished you can check the results on the Grafana Dashboard http://localhost:3003/d/F9jppxQiz/android-task-tracking?orgId=1:

Additionally, we have included a new Dashboard to show how to work with the Caching information of the task execution:

http://localhost:3003/d/WlpZEBRMz/task-cache-info?orgId=1

Other Existing Libraries

Talaiot is not a new idea. There are multiple awesome plugins to use to achieve same results:

• Gradle Enterprise: If you are using Gradle Enterprise Talaiot is useless because the aggregation is great and you have the support from Gradle :)

• Build Time Tracker by Pascal Hartig(@passy).

• Kuronometer Plugin developed with Scala and FP concepts by Pedro Vicente Gómez Sánchez(@pedrovgs)

Docs

Docs

Articles

Metrics Configuration by Svyatoslav Chatchenko

Understanding Talaiot

Exploring the InfluxDbPublisher in Talaiot

Graphs, Gradle and Talaiot

Talaiot at Scale

Contributing

Talaiot is Open Source and accepts contributions of new Publishers, Metrics and Dashboards that we can include as provisioned ones in the Docker image. With the new Plugin structure you can create your own plugins, feel free to contribute with new plugins or if you want to use your own repo drop us comment to include it in a community plugins.

Contributors

• Anton Malinskiy: New format metrics, rework InfluxdbPublisher and new Publishers Json and Timeline.

• Vipul Solanki

• Ivan Balaksha

• Svyatoslav Chatchenko

• Mozart Petter

• Sergey Rybalkin

• Satyarth Sampath

• Iñaki Villar

Thanks

Pascal Hartig, Build Time Tracker it was an inspiration to build this plugin.

Bintray release plugin plugin by Novoda

Kohttp Library

Graphviz-java Library

Orchid