What is a Target?

FoundriesFactory CI just created your first Target triggered by your changes in the containers.git.

Tip

A Target is a description of the software a device should run.

You just pushed changes to the devel branch of your containers.git repository. By default, your Factory is configured to automatically trigger a containers-devel CI job to build your container application changes.

After a successful build, a Target is created that:

  • Combines the last successful containers-devel and platform-devel builds.
  • Has a devel tag. Your Factory is configured by default to add the devel tag to Targets triggered by changes to the devel branch.
  • Has a Hardware ID which matches the MACHINE you selected when your Factory was created.

Last but not least, devices configured to watch a tag and Hardware ID (MACHINE) that match your latest Target will receive an update.

Tip

At this point, your device should be registered to your Factory according to the Getting Started guide. If your device is online, it will automatically receive an update with your latest Target, but we will cover more on that in the next tutorial.

Note

Read the blog, What is a Target? to get a high-level overview of Targets. Don’t worry about the instructions. We will replicate them for your Factory here.

To help you understand What a Target is, the instructions below will guide you through a similar path as the blog article.

fioctl status will list all devices registered to your Factory and what tag they are following.

It also lists what Target is installed in each device.

fioctl status

Example Output:

Total number of devices: 1

TAG    LATEST TARGET  DEVICES  ON LATEST  ONLINE
---    -------------  -------  ---------  ------
devel  4              1        1          1

## Tag: devel
        TARGET  DEVICES  DETAILS
        ------  -------  -------
        4       1        `fioctl targets show 4`

Before you inspect Target 4, list all your targets available with the command below:

fioctl targets list

Example Output:

VERSION  TAGS    APPS        HARDWARE IDs
-------  ----    ----        ------------
2        devel               raspberrypi3-64
3        master              raspberrypi3-64
4        devel   shellhttpd  raspberrypi3-64

When your Factory is created, two platform builds are launched in FoundriesFactory CI: devel and master.

Based on the output example, they correspond to versions 2 and 3 respectively.

As you probably noticed, we suggest you start your development with the devel branch and install the image from platform-devel builds.

When you pushed your containers.git changes, it resulted in version 4. In simple terms: The new Version 4 Target was created by combining the latest container build (Version 4) + the latest platform build (Version 2).

Use this command to see a better overview of Target 4:

fioctl targets show 4

Example Output:

Tags:      devel
CI:        https://ci.foundries.io/projects/<factory>/lmp/builds/4/
Source:
        https://source.foundries.io/factories/<factory>/lmp-manifest.git/commit/?id=fb119f5
        https://source.foundries.io/factories/<factory>/meta-subscriber-overrides.git/commit/?id=d89efb2
        https://source.foundries.io/factories/<factory>/containers.git/commit/?id=0bec425

TARGET NAME            OSTREE HASH - SHA256
-----------            --------------------
raspberrypi3-64-lmp-4  3abd308ea6d4caffcdf250c7170e0dc9c8ff9082c64538bf14ca07c2df1beeff

COMPOSE APP  VERSION
-----------  -------
shellhttpd   hub.foundries.io/<factory>/shellhttpd@sha256:3ce57a22faa2484ce602c86f522b72b1b105ce85a14fc5b2a9a12eb12de4ec7f

The example above, shows a Target Name named raspberrypi3-64-lmp-4 that:

  • Is tagged with the devel tag.
  • Specifies the OStree HASH corresponding to the latest platform-devel build.
  • Lists all the container apps available, which in this case is just the shellhttpd app.
  • Based on the MACHINE raspberrypi3-64.