Functionality of building isolated applications

Last Updated: 16 Sep 2024

The process of building isolated applications begins with the allow-list. The allow-list is a collection of applications that are eligible to take advantage of a faster CI pipeline.

Functionality

The allow-list lives in a JSON file in the vets-website repository. Entries in the allow-list have the following properties:

Name	Required	Description
`rootFolder`	Yes	Root folder of application(s) that lives in src/applications.
`slackGroup`	Yes	Slack user group of the team that owns the application.
`continuousDeployment`	No	Disables continuous deployment when set to `false`, otherwise enabled by default for applications on the allow-list.

Once an application directory is added to the allow-list, branches with changes exclusive to those applications will see faster CI workflow runs. Branches that include changes from non-application code, or applications that aren’t on the allow-list, will perform a full build and all unit tests as usual.

Example Scenarios

Application(s) on allow-list	Changed files in branch	Build Outcome
JSON `"apps": [ { "rootFolder": "vaos", "slackGroup": "@vaos-fe-dev" } ]`	`src/applications/vaos/vaos-entry.jsx` `src/applications/vaos/sass/vaos.scss`	Only the `vaos` app is built, since all changed files are part of the app.
JSON `"apps": [ { "rootFolder": "vaos", "slackGroup": "@vaos-fe-dev" } ]`	`src/applications/vaos/vaos-entry.jsx` `src/applications/vaos/sass/vaos.scss` `src/platform/utilities/feature-toggles/featureFlagNames.js`	A full build is executed, because non-application code was changed.
JSON `"apps": [ { "rootFolder": "check-in", "slackGroup": "@check-in-fe" } ]`	`src/applications/check-in/pre-check-in/routes.jsx`	All `check-in` apps are built, since there are multiple apps in the root folder.

Testing

For isolated application builds, the Unit Tests job in the Continuous Integration workflow will only run tests belonging to the updated application(s). The Cypress E2E Tests job will only run Cypress tests for the changed application(s) as usual, with the addition of the MegaMenu Cypress test, to ensure that the header is consistent across all applications.

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