Remote client tool

This tool is meant to provide various debugging functionality for users of remote caching and execution in Bazel such as downloading blobs and directories by digest. Details on using remote caching and execution in Bazel can be found here.

Installation

This tool is built using Bazel:

$ bazel build //:remote_client

Usage

The command line options for configuring a connection to a remote cache (cache address, authentication, TLS, etc.) with this tool are identical to the options in Bazel.

For a full listing of configuration options and commands, see remote_client --help.

Downloading cache blobs

This tool can download blobs from a CAS by digest with the cat command. For example, to download a blob with digest 762670a6d50679e5495d3a489290bf2b3845172de3c048476668e91f6fc42b8e/18544 to the file hello-world:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client \
    --remote_cache=localhost:8080 \
    cat \
    --digest=762670a6d50679e5495d3a489290bf2b3845172de3c048476668e91f6fc42b8e/18544 \
    --file=/tmp/hello-world

Given the digest to a Directory which is in CAS, this tool can recursively list the files and subdirectories which make up that directory with the ls command. For example, to list a Directory with digest d1c2cad73bf385e1ebc7f7433781a9a5807d425de9426c11d770b5123e5c6a5b/82:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client \
    --remote_cache=localhost:8080 \
    ls \
    --digest=d1c2cad73bf385e1ebc7f7433781a9a5807d425de9426c11d770b5123e5c6a5b/82
examples [Directory digest: d7c6e933b3cd90bc75560418674c7e59284c829fb383e80aa7531217c12adbc9/78]
examples/cpp [Directory digest: 51f83b4726027e59f982f49ffe5de1828a81e9d2135b379937a26c0840de6b20/175]
examples/cpp/hello-lib.h [File content digest: fbc71c527a8d91d1b4414484811c20edc0369d0ccdfcfd562ebd01726141bf51/368]
examples/cpp/hello-world.cc [File content digest: 6cd9f4d242f4441a375539146b0cdabb559c6184921aede45d5a0ed7b84d5253/747]

Similarily, a Directory can also be downloaded to a local path using the getdir command: d1c2cad73bf385e1ebc7f7433781a9a5807d425de9426c11d770b5123e5c6a5b/82:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client \
    --remote_cache=localhost:8080 \
    getdir \
    --digest=d1c2cad73bf385e1ebc7f7433781a9a5807d425de9426c11d770b5123e5c6a5b/82 \
    --path=/tmp/testdir
$ ls -l /tmp/testdir
 total 4
 drwxr-xr-x 3 cdlee * 4096 Mar 12 17:22 examples

Printing gRPC log files

Bazel can dump a log of remote execution related gRPC calls made during a remote build by running the remote build with the --experimental_remote_grpc_log=PATH_TO_LOG flag specified. This creates a file consisting of serialized log entry protobufs which can be printed by this tool in a human-readable way with the printlog command:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client --grpc_log PATH_TO_LOG printlog

Getting a list of failed actions

This is available to Remote API V2 functionality, which is present in Bazel 0.17 and onward.

The remote tool can analyse the grps log and print a list of digests of failed actions:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client --grpc_log PATH_TO_LOG failed_actions

For the purpose of this command, a failed action is any action whose execute response returned a non-zero exit status or a non-zero status code (for example, DEADLINE_EXCEEDED). An action that has been successfully retried will not be included. Any action that did not obtain an execute response will not be included - this could happen, for example, when remote execution was unavailable.

Running Actions in Docker

This is available to Remote API V2 functionality, which is present in Bazel 0.17 and onward.

Given an Action in protobuf text format that provides a container-image platform, this tool can set up its inputs in a local directory and print a Docker command that will run this individual action locally in that directory. The action digest can be obtained by printing a gRPC log for a Bazel run that executed that Action remotely and viewing the relevant GetActionResult or Execute call.

A given Action can be inspected with the show_action command:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client \
    --remote_cache=localhost:8080 \
    show_action \
    --digest ce5b3fe85286f6a2320ed343a6e651e923a89f9c97cd24e7cfbacd6b9e6ebcd2/147

Command [digest: 0f576d62c99503ec832bec4def17885cee5daffc5dd1ae70e3d955aecd58149a/4149]:
... (truncated)
external/bazel_tools/tools/test/test-setup.sh examples/remotebuildexecution/rbe_system_check/cc/rbe_system_check_test

Input files [total: 3, root Directory digest: 9f03a53b777059ec5c85c946fbd6a7a7402e89a079e4ada935a829bf209751b2/165]:
... (truncated)

Output files:
... (truncated)
bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/testlogs/examples/remotebuildexecution/rbe_system_check/cc/rbe_system_check_test/test.xml

Output directories:
(none)

Platform:
properties {
  name: "container-image"
  value: "docker://gcr.io/cloud-marketplace/google/rbe-ubuntu16-04@sha256:9bd8ba020af33edb5f11eff0af2f63b3bcb168cd6566d7b27c6685e717787928"
}

Note that this action has a container-image platform property which specifies a container that the action is to run in.

Now, using the run command, the Action can be setup in a local directory and run with the provided Docker command:

$ bazel-bin/remote_client \
    --remote_cache=localhost:8080 \
    run \
    --digest ce5b3fe85286f6a2320ed343a6e651e923a89f9c97cd24e7cfbacd6b9e6ebcd2/147 \
    --path=/tmp/run_here
 Setting up Action in directory /tmp/run_here...

 Successfully setup Action in directory /tmp/run_here.

 To run the Action locally, run:
   docker run -v /tmp/run_here:/tmp/run_here-docker -w /tmp/run_here-docker -e gcr.io/cloud-marketplace/google/rbe-debian8@sha256:XXX examples/cpp/hello-success_test

   docker run -u 277174 -v /tmp/run_here:/tmp/run_here-docker -w /tmp/run_here-docker (...)

For V1 API and earlier, the action protos have not been stored in CAS. Instead of using action digest, the above commands can use the parameter --textproto to specify a path to a text proto file containing a V1 action. This can be copy-pasted from an Execute call in the grpc log.

For V2 API and later, you can skip specifying the action digest if grpc_log is specified. In this case, the tool will scan the log for failed actions. If a single failed action is found, it will use that action's digest. If multiple failed actions are found, it will print a list of options.

$ bazel-bin/remote_client \
    --remote_cache=localhost:8080 \
    --grpc_log=/tmp/grpclog
    run

Developer Information

Third-party Dependencies

Most third-party dependencies (e.g. protobuf, gRPC, ...) are managed automatically via bazel-deps. After changing the dependencies.yaml file, just run this to regenerate the 3rdparty folder:

git clone https://github.com/johnynek/bazel-deps.git ../bazel-deps
cd ../bazel-deps
bazel build //src/scala/com/github/johnynek/bazel_deps:parseproject_deploy.jar
cd ../tools_remote
../bazel-deps/gen_maven_deps.sh generate -r `pwd` -s 3rdparty/workspace.bzl -d dependencies.yaml

Things that aren't supported by bazel-deps are being imported as manually managed remote repos via the WORKSPACE file.