Convey is built around a concept that we call a build container. A build
container is a container that has all of the dependencies to turn an input into
something else. This could be source code or even just data processing. You can
find more information on build containers
[
here](
http://blog.terranillius.com/post/docker_builder_pattern/).
Convey is built around this concept to allow you to build/process anything on
any platform while at the same time protecting the host from a malicious
config. This protection is provided by not exposing dangerous options like
volume mounts or port forwards while running containers. This is accomplished
by using a shared volume and mounting it into containers as they are run. This
allows you to pass state between modular tasks that can be reused between
Once built, convey can build itself entirely. This is done by using an import
task to copy the source code into the workspace. Once that stage is complete,
it runs another stage that builds for linux-x86_64, windows-x86_64,
darwin-x86_64, and freebsd-x86_64 in parallel. The final stage will take those
compiled binaries and export them back to the hosts file system. You can
see this plan in its entirety
[
here](
https://keep.imfreedom.org/grim/convey/file/default/convey.yml).
Of course you don't have to export back to the host file system. Since these
are just containers, you could instead upload them to your staging environment,
packagecloud.io, bintray.com, whatever. Or you could export to the host and
create another plan that will import the artifacts and then publish them.
