Windows

64-bit: Server 2012, 10 | Server 2016

Stable Installer

Linux

64-bit: RHEL 8, 7, 6, 5.5+ | SUSE 15, 12 | Ubuntu 20, 19, 18, 16, 14 | Debian 10, 9, 8, 7

Stable Installer

Step-by-step quick start instructions:

Next, get your trial license via email and import it into the Cluster Manager:

  1. Point your browser to the host you installed the trial on to access the Cluster Manager. If your browser is on the same host, this will be localhost: https://localhost/.

    1. If you get a browser security warning about a self-signed certificate, this is expected. Accept it and continue.

  2. Login as admin with the default password changeme. (Be sure to change this password soon!)

  3. Select “Administration” on the top navigation bar, then select “Licenses” which appears on the bar underneath it.

  4. Click “Import License” near the upper right corner of the page.

  5. Copy and paste the license data from the email you received into the “Data” text area, and then click “OK.”

    1. If you can't copy and paste the license data from the email, save the license data to a file and use the "Upload File" option in the Cluster Manager.

  6. Click the “Agents” tab in the top navigation bar and check to see that some agents are listed and that their statuses are green. Your Cluster Manager and agents are now good to go!

Now you’ll need to configure your shell environment to be able to access the CloudBees Build Acceleration tools which are installed under /opt/ecloud (C:\ECloud on Windows):

  1. Open a shell on the host where the trial is installed.

  2. Add /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/bin and /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/64/bin to your PATH (C:\ECloud\i686_win32\bin and C:\ECloud\i686_win32\64\bin on Windows).

    1. If you prefer, there are already installed scripts which may do this for you: For bash, type source /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/conf/ecloud.bash.profile. For csh or tcsh, type source /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/conf/ecloud.csh.profile.

    2. If you like, add these changes to your shell’s startup rc file (e.g., .bashrc for bash) to make these changes persistent.

  3. Run emake --version and moxie --version to verify that the changes to your PATH are active.

Now you’re ready to run an accelerated build! CloudBees Build Acceleration has a tool, moxie, which can help simulate builds. A simulated build will perform all the analogous steps of a typical build, including reading and writing files and taking time, but will require very little CPU (and won’t actually create anything that runs, obviously). This, however, can show the power of CloudBees Build Acceleration to make your builds faster, since what makes a simulated build faster is exactly what makes a real build faster:

  1. Create a fresh directory and cd to it.

  2. Create a simulated build environment by running moxie /opt/ecloud/i686_Linux/moxie-specs/sample.mox (moxie C:\ECloud\i686_win32\moxie-specs\sample.mox on Windows).

  3. As the output indicates, a sample directory was created which contains the build environment. Switch to it: cd sample.

    1. If you wish, inspect the files that were created. You’ll see that they involve makefile(s) and a series of dummy source and headers files that the build will use, but do not actually contain any code.

  4. Now, invoke GNU Make to see how long it takes to run: make. It should take a little over a minute; this will be the baseline for comparison.

  5. Now clean the build environment to reset: make clean.

  6. Finally, you can run emake to see some build acceleration. Invoke emake and point it to the Cluster Manager on the same host: emake --emake-cm=localhost. This should take less than 30 seconds!

    1. If you wish to see output analogous to GNU Make instead of the console, add the --emake-show-progress=0 option to the command line.

  7. If you’re interested, you can try the other default simulated builds: Repeat the above steps but replace sample.mox with alphabets.mox for a longer build (about 15 minutes with GNU Make) or world.mox for a much longer build (about an hour with GNU Make). Since these are more parallelizable simulated builds, you should see even greater acceleration!

You can get even more acceleration by using the JobCache feature. This involves running two consecutive builds: one to “train” and be able to create a cache of build targets, and another which relies on the resulting cache to speed up the build. The default simulated builds are also compatible with JobCache:

  1. Start with a fresh simulated build (by running make clean in a preexisting simulated build directory).

  2. Run a training build with JobCache enabled by typing emake --emake-cm=<Cluster Manager host> --emake-jobcache=all.

  3. The cache results are now stored in the newly-created .emake directory.

  4. Type make clean to clean the build (this will not disturb the cache).

  5. Run a second build that exploits the cache by again typing emake --emake=cm=<Cluster Manager host> --emake-jobcache=all. You should see much greater acceleration, and subsequent builds will continue to use this cache!

Now you’re ready to try CloudBees Build Acceleration with your own builds. Things to keep in mind:

  1. Set the EMAKE_ROOT environment variable (or use the --emake-root=<root> option) to a colon-separated list of directories which will encompasses all of the inputs and outputs of your build process. It defaults to the current directory.

  2. Run emake --emake-cm=<Cluster Manager host> followed by whatever additional emake options or arguments to GNU Make you need.

  3. Add an --emake-emulation=<emulation> option to have emake emulate different build systems. For instance, emake --emake-emulation=gmake4.1 will emulate GNU Make 4.1 and emake --emake-emulation=ninja will emulate Ninja.

  4. When an accelerated build runs, emake will create two files:

    1. emake.xml, an annotation file which contains information about the tasks that ran and their timing. You can view its contents interactively by running Electric Insight (einsight).

    2. emake.data, a history file which contains information about dependencies that were encountered. For particularly complicated builds, a history file will help speed up subsequent builds.

  5. Type emake --help for a full list of command line options.

Have fun!

If you’re having trouble installing CloudBees Build Acceleration or activating the license key, try the Quick Start Guide below, or send an email to accelerator-trial@cloudbees.com.

Here are some other useful resources: