charm-concierge 0.1.0

A tool to provision and manage charm development environments

concierge-py

concierge is an opinionated utility for provisioning charm development and testing machines. concierge-py is a reimplementation (vibespiled) in Python.

Its role is to ensure that a given machine has the relevant "craft" tools and providers installed, then bootstrap a Juju controller onto each of the providers. Additionally, it can install selected tools from the snap store or the Ubuntu archive.

concierge also provides the facility to "restore" a machine, performing the opposite to "prepare" meaning that, for example, any snaps that would have been installed by concierge, would then be removed.

[!IMPORTANT] Take care with concierge restore. If the machine already had a given snap or configuration prior to running concierge prepare, this will not be taken into account during restore. Running concierge restore is the literal opposite of concierge prepare, so any packages, files or configuration that would normally be created during prepare will be removed.

Installation

The package is published to PyPI as charm-concierge. The easiest way to use it is with uvx:

sudo uvx charm-concierge prepare

For repeated use, install it permanently with uv tool install:

uv tool install charm-concierge
sudo concierge prepare

Note: The PyPI package name is charm-concierge, but the command is concierge (both concierge and charm-concierge commands are available).

Alternatively, you can clone and run from source:

git clone https://github.com/tonyandrewmeyer/concierge-py
cd concierge-py
sudo uv run concierge -h

Usage

The output of concierge --help can be seen below.

 Usage: concierge [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...                                                                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
 Provision and manage charm development environments                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
╭─ Options ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --verbose             -v        Enable debug logging                                                                                                                                                                       │
│ --install-completion            Install completion for the current shell.                                                                                                                                                  │
│ --show-completion               Show completion for the current shell, to copy it or customize the installation.                                                                                                           │
│ --help                          Show this message and exit.                                                                                                                                                                │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ prepare   Provision a charm development environment.                                                                                                                                                                       │
│ restore   Restore the system to its pre-Concierge state.                                                                                                                                                                   │
│ status    Show the status of the Concierge environment.                                                                                                                                                                    │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Some flags can be set by environment variable, and if specified by flag and environment variable, the environment variable version will always take precedent. The equivalents are:

Flag	Env Var
--disable-juju	CONCIERGE_DISABLE_JUJU
--juju-channel	CONCIERGE_JUJU_CHANNEL
--k8s-channel	CONCIERGE_K8S_CHANNEL
--microk8s-channel	CONCIERGE_MICROK8S_CHANNEL
--lxd-channel	CONCIERGE_LXD_CHANNEL
--charmcraft-channel	CONCIERGE_CHARMCRAFT_CHANNEL
--snapcraft-channel	CONCIERGE_SNAPCRAFT_CHANNEL
--rockcraft-channel	CONCIERGE_ROCKCRAFT_CHANNEL
--google-credential-file	CONCIERGE_GOOGLE_CREDENTIAL_FILE
--extra-snaps	CONCIERGE_EXTRA_SNAPS
--extra-debs	CONCIERGE_EXTRA_DEBS

Command Examples

The best source of examples for how to invoke concierge can be found in the tests directory, but otherwise:

1. Run concierge using the dev preset, adding one additional snap, using CLI flags:

sudo concierge prepare -p dev --extra-snaps node/22/stable

2. Run concierge using the dev preset, overriding the Juju channel:

export CONCIERGE_JUJU_CHANNEL=3.6/beta
sudo concierge prepare -p dev

Configuration

Presets

concierge comes with a number of presets that are likely to serve most charm development needs:

Preset Name	Included
crafts	lxd, snapcraft, charmcraft, rockcraft
dev	juju, k8s, lxd, snapcraft, charmcraft, rockcraft, jhack
k8s	juju, k8s, lxd, rockcraft, charmcraft
microk8s	juju, microk8s, lxd, rockcraft, charmcraft
machine	juju, lxd, snapcraft, charmcraft

Note that in the microk8s/k8s presets, while lxd is installed, it is not bootstrapped. It is installed and initialised with enough config such that charmcraft can use it as a build backend.

Config File

If the presets do not meet your needs, you can create your own config file to instruct concierge how to provision your machine.

concierge takes configuration in the form of a YAML file named concierge.yaml in the current working directory.

Schema

# (Optional): Target Juju configuration.
juju:
  # (Optional): Disable installation of Juju (and therefore all bootstrapping).
  disable: true | false
  # (Optional): Channel from which to install Juju.
  channel: <channel>
  # (Optional): Juju agent version to use when bootstrapping (e.g. "3.6.11").
  agent-version: <version>
  # (Optional): A map of model-defaults to set when bootstrapping *all* Juju controllers.
  model-defaults:
    <model-default>: <value>
  # (Optional): A map of bootstrap-constraints to set when bootstrapping *all* Juju controllers.
  bootstrap-constraints:
    <bootstrap-constraint>: <value>
  # (Optional): A string of extra arguments to append to the `juju bootstrap` command.
  # The string will be parsed using shell-style splitting rules.
  extra-bootstrap-args: <args>

# (Required): Define the providers to be installed and bootstrapped.
providers:
  # (Optional) MicroK8s provider configuration.
  microk8s:
    # (Optional) Enable or disable MicroK8s.
    enable: true | false
    # (Optional) Whether or not to bootstrap a controller onto MicroK8s.
    bootstrap: true | false
    # (Optional): A map of model-defaults to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    model-defaults:
      <model-default>: <value>
    # (Optional): A map of bootstrap-constraints to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    bootstrap-constraints:
      <bootstrap-constraint>: <value>
    # (Optional): Channel from which to install MicroK8s.
    channel: <channel>
    # (Optional): MicroK8s addons to enable.
    addons:
      - <addon>[:<params>]

  # (Optional) K8s provider configuration.
  k8s:
    # (Optional) Enable or disable K8s.
    enable: true | false
    # (Optional) Whether or not to bootstrap a controller onto K8s.
    bootstrap: true | false
    # (Optional): Channel from which to install K8s.
    channel: <channel>
    # (Optional): A map of model-defaults to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    model-defaults:
      <model-default>: <value>
    # (Optional): A map of bootstrap-constraints to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    bootstrap-constraints:
      <bootstrap-constraint>: <value>
    # (Optional): K8s features to configure.
    features:
      <feature>:
        <key>: <value>

  # (Optional) LXD provider configuration.
  lxd:
    # (Optional) Enable or disable LXD.
    enable: true | false
    # (Optional) Whether or not to bootstrap a controller onto LXD.
    bootstrap: true | false
    # (Optional): Channel from which to install LXD.
    channel: <channel>
    # (Optional): A map of model-defaults to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    model-defaults:
      <model-default>: <value>
    # (Optional): A map of bootstrap-constraints to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    bootstrap-constraints:
      <bootstrap-constraint>: <value>

  # (Optional) Google provider configuration.
  google:
    # (Optional) Enable or disable the Google provider.
    enable: true | false
    # (Optional) Whether or not to bootstrap a controller onto Google Cloud.
    bootstrap: true | false
    # (Optional): File containing credentials for Google cloud.
    # See below note on the credentials file format.
    credentials-file: <path>
    # (Optional): A map of model-defaults to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    model-defaults:
      <model-default>: <value>
    # (Optional): A map of bootstrap-constraints to set when bootstrapping the Juju controller.
    bootstrap-constraints:
      <bootstrap-constraint>: <value>

# (Optional) Additional host configuration.
host:
  # (Optional) List of apt packages to install on the host.
  packages:
    - <package name>
  # (Optional) Map of snap packages to install on the host.
  snaps:
    <snap name>:
      # (Required) Channel from which to install the snap.
      channel: <channel>
      # (Optional) List of snap connections to form.
      connections:
        - <snap>:<plug-interface>
        - <snap>:<plug-interface> <snap>:<plug-interface>

Providing Credentials Files

Juju has some "built-in" clouds for which it can obtain credentials automatically, such as LXD and MicroK8s. Other clouds require credentials for the bootstrap process.

Concierge handles this with the credentials-file option for supported providers.

Juju's credentials are specified in ~/.local/share/juju/credentials.yaml, in the following format:

credentials:
  <cloud-name>:
    <credential-name>:
      key: value
      key: value

For example, a pre-configured credentials.yaml might look like so where Google Cloud had already been configured:

credentials:
  google:
    mycred:
      auth-type: oauth2
      client-email: [e-mail]
      client-id: "1234567891234"
      private-key: |
        -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
        deadbeef
        -----END PRIVATE KEY-----
      project-id: foobar

When providing the path to a credentials-file for concierge, it should contain only the details for a specific credential, so the example above would require a file like so:

auth-type: oauth2
client-email: [e-mail]
client-id: "1234567891234"
private-key: |
  -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
  deadbeef
  -----END PRIVATE KEY-----
project-id: foobar

If you already have a credentials.yaml pre-populated with credentials, you can use yq to build the file for you, for example:

cat ~/.local/share/juju/credentials.yaml | yq -r '.credentials.google.mycred' > google-creds.yaml

In the above example google-creds.yaml would be valid for the credentials-file option.

Example Config

An example config file can be seen below:

juju:
  channel: 3.6/stable
  agent-version: "3.6.8"
  model-defaults:
    test-mode: "true"
    automatically-retry-hooks: "false"
  bootstrap-constraints:
    arch: amd64
  extra-bootstrap-args: --config idle-connection-timeout=90s

providers:
  microk8s:
    enable: true
    bootstrap: true
    channel: 1.31-strict/stable
    addons:
      - hostpath-storage
      - dns
      - rbac
      - metallb:10.64.140.43-10.64.140.49

  k8s:
    enable: true
    bootstrap: true
    channel: 1.32-classic/stable
    features:
      local-storage:
      load-balancer:
        l2-mode: true
        cidrs: 10.64.140.43/32
    bootstrap-constraints:
      root-disk: 2G

  lxd:
    enable: true
    bootstrap: false
    channel: latest/stable

  google:
    enable: true
    bootstrap: false
    credentials-file: /home/ubuntu/google-credentials.yaml

host:
  packages:
    - python3-pip
    - python3-venv
  snaps:
    astral-uv:
      channel: latest/stable
    charmcraft:
      channel: latest/stable
    jhack:
      channel: latest/edge
      connections:
        - jhack:dot-local-share-juju

Development / HACKING

This project uses goreleaser to build and release, and spread for integration testing,

You can get started by just using uv:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/tonyandrewmeyer/cconcierge-py
cd concierge-py

# Build/run with Go
uv run concierge

# Run the unit tests
uv run pytest

# Build a snapshot release with goreleaser (output in ./dist)
uv build

Testing

Most of the code within tries to call a shell command, or manipulate the system in some way, which makes unit testing much more awkward. As a result, the majority of the testing is done with spread.

Currently, there are two supported backends - tests can either be run in LXD virtual machines, or on a pre-provisioned server (such as a Github Actions runner or development VM).

To show the available integration tests, you can:

$ spread -list lxd:
lxd:ubuntu-24.04:tests/extra-debs
lxd:ubuntu-24.04:tests/extra-packages-config-file
lxd:ubuntu-24.04:tests/extra-snaps
# ...

From there, you can either run all of the tests, or a selection:

# Run all of the tests
$ spread -v lxd:
# Run a particular test
$ spread -v lxd:ubuntu-24.04:tests/juju-model-defaults

To run any of the tests on a locally provisioned machine, use the github-ci backend, e.g.

# List available tests
$ spread --list github-ci:
# Run all of the tests
$ spread -v github-ci:
# Run a particular test
$ spread -v github-ci:ubuntu-24.04:tests/juju-model-defaults