Part 1: A simple Earthfile

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Below you'll find a simple example of an Earthfile. All the magic of Earthly happens in the Earthfile, which you may notice is very similar to a Dockerfile. This is an intentional design decision. Existing Dockerfiles can easily be ported to Earthly by copying them to an Earthfile and tweaking them slightly.
VERSION 0.6
FROM golang:1.15-alpine3.13
WORKDIR /go-example
 
build:
    COPY main.go .
    RUN go build -o build/go-example main.go
    SAVE ARTIFACT build/go-example /go-example AS LOCAL build/go-example
​
docker:
    COPY +build/go-example .
    ENTRYPOINT ["/go-example/go-example"]
    SAVE IMAGE go-example:latest
Throughout this tutorial, we'll build up this example Earthfile from scratch and then add even more to it. By the end you'll have a better grasp of how Earthly works and the power and repeatability it can bring to your build process.
This tutorial focuses on using Earthly with a Go project, but you can find examples of Earthfiles for Python, Javascript and Java at the bottom of each page.
To copy the files for this example ( Part 1 ) run
mkdir tutorial
cd tutorial
earthly --artifact github.com/earthly/earthly/examples/tutorial/go:main+part1/part1 ./part1
Creating Your First Earthfile
We'll slowly build up to the Earthfile we have above. Let's start with these first three lines.
Earthfile
VERSION 0.6
FROM golang:1.15-alpine3.13
WORKDIR /go-example
And some simple Hello World code in a main.go.
package main
​
import "fmt"
​
func main() {
	fmt.Println("hello world")
}
Earthfiles are always named Earthfile, regardless of their location in the codebase. The Earthfile starts off with a version definition. This will tell Earthly which features to enable and which ones not to so that the build script maintains compatibility over time, even if Earthly itself is updated.
The first commands in the file are part of the base target and are implicitly inherited by all other targets. Targets are just sets of instructions we can call on from within the Earthfile, or when we run Earthly at the command line. Targets need an environment to run in. These environments come in the form of Docker images. In this case we are saying that all the instructions in our Earthfile will use golang:1.15-alpine3.13, unless we specify otherwise. (More on this in a bit.)
Lastly, we change our working directory to /go-example.
Creating Your First Targets
Earthly aims to replace Dockerfile, makefile, bash scripts and more. We can take all the setup, configuration and build steps we'd normally define in those files and put them in our Earthfile in the form of targets.
Let's start by defining a target to build our simple Go app. When we run Earthly, we can tell it to execute a target by passing a plus for target (+) and then the target name. So we'll be able to run our target with earthly +build.
build:
    COPY main.go .
    RUN go build -o build/go-example main.go
    SAVE ARTIFACT build/go-example /go-example AS LOCAL build/go-example
The first thing we do is copy our main.go from the build context (the directory where the Earthfile resides) to the build environment (the containerized environment where Earthly commands are run).
Next, we run a go build command against the previously copied main.go file.
Finally, we save the output of the build command as an artifact called /go-example (it can be later referenced as +build/go-example).
Now let's create a new target called +docker.
docker:
    COPY +build/go-example .
    ENTRYPOINT ["/go-example/go-example"]
    SAVE IMAGE go-example:latest
Here we copy the artifact /go-example produced by another target, +build, to the current directory within the build environment. Set the entrypoint for the resulting docker image.
You may notice the command COPY +build/... ..., which has an unfamiliar form. This is a special type of COPY, which can be used to pass artifacts from one target to another. In this case, the target build (referenced as +build) produces an artifact, which has been declared with SAVE ARTIFACT, and the target docker copies that artifact in its build environment.
With Earthly you have the ability to pass such artifacts or images between targets within the same Earthfile, but also across different Earthfiles across directories or even across repositories. To read more about this, see the target, artifact and image referencing guide or jump to part 5 of this guide.
Lastly, we save the current state as a docker image, which will have the docker tag go-example:latest. This image is only made available to the host's docker if the entire build succeeds.
Target Environments
Notice how we already had Go installed for both our +build and +docker targets. This is because targets inherit from the base target which for us was the FROM golang:1.15-alpine3.13 that we set up at the top of the file, but it's worth noting that targets can define their own environments. For example:
VERSION 0.6
FROM golang:1.15-alpine3.13
WORKDIR /go-example
​
build:
    COPY main.go .
    RUN go build -o build/go-example main.go
    SAVE ARTIFACT build/go-example /go-example AS LOCAL build/go-example
​
npm:
    FROM node:12-alpine3.12
    WORKDIR /src
    RUN npm install
    COPY assets/ .
    RUN npm test
In this example, the +build target does not have a FROM, so it inherits from the base target, golang:1.15-alpine3.13.
The target +npm, on the other hand, specifies its own environment with the FROMcommand and so will run inside of a node:12-alpine3.12 container.
Running the build
In the example Earthfile we have defined two explicit targets: +build and +docker. We can tell Earthly to execute a target by passing typing a plus sign (+) followed by the target name. In this case our docker target calls on our build target, so we can run both with:
earthly +docker
The output might look like this:
Earthly build output
Notice how to the left of |, within the output, we can see some targets like +base, +build and +docker . Notice how the output is interleaved between +docker and +build. This is because the system executes independent build steps in parallel. The reason this is possible effortlessly is because only very few things are shared between the builds of the recipes and those things are declared and obvious. The rest is completely isolated.
In addition, notice how even though the base is used as part of both build and docker, it is only executed once. This is because the system deduplicates execution, where possible.
Furthermore, the fact that the docker target depends on the build target is visible within the command COPY +build/.... Through this command, the system knows that it also needs to build the target +build, in order to satisfy the dependency on the artifact.
Finally, notice how the output of the build (the docker image and the files) are only written after the build is declared a success. This is due to another isolation principle of Earthly: a build either succeeds completely or it fails altogether.
Once the build has executed, we can run the resulting docker image to try it out:
docker run --rm go-example:latest
More Examples
Javascript
Java
Python
Learn the basics
Part 2: Outputs
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On this page
Creating Your First Earthfile
Creating Your First Targets
Target Environments
Running the build