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Use cloacina-compiler Locally

How to Use cloacina-compiler Locally

This guide shows how to use the cloacinactl package commands to check, validate, and pack .cloacina archives on your laptop or in CI, without running the long-lived cloacina-compiler service. This is the path most developers want for iterating on a workflow before deploying it.

The key fact: a .cloacina archive is a source archive (tar + bzip2). The shared library is compiled server-side by the cloacina-compiler service after upload — nothing you build locally ships in the archive. Local package build is purely a catch-errors-early compile check.

Prerequisites

  • Rust toolchain (stable) for Rust packages; nothing extra for Python packages.
  • cloacinactl on your PATH.
  • A package source tree in the canonical shape — scaffold one with cloacinactl package new (see Creating Your First Package). Rust packages need no [lib] crate-type, no packaged feature, and no build.rs: the compiler service injects the build wiring.

The Three-Step Local Loop 

cd path/to/my-workflow

# 1. (Rust only) Compile check — catches errors before upload.
cloacinactl package build .

# 2. Validate the source tree against the canonical package format.
cloacinactl package validate .

# 3. Pack the source + manifest into a .cloacina archive.
cloacinactl package pack .

package validate also accepts a packed archive (cloacinactl package validate ./my-workflow.cloacina), so you can smoke-test the artifact you’re about to upload.

Step 1: package build 

cloacinactl package build <DIR> [--release]

A thin wrapper over cargo build run in <DIR>. For Python packages ([metadata].language = "python" or inferred) it is a no-op — there is nothing to compile locally.

This step is optional: the server-side compiler performs the real build. Running it locally just means you find compile errors on your laptop instead of in the server’s build queue.

Common failure modes:

  • package.toml missing → the language probe errors before invoking cargo.
  • Dependencies still reference cloacina (the full crate) instead of the slim packaged pair (cloacina-workflow + cloacina-workflow-plugin) → slow builds and a bloated artifact. See Migrating to Service Mode.

Step 2: package validate 

cloacinactl package validate <DIR | ARCHIVE>

Checks the source tree (or archive) against the canonical package format without uploading: manifest schema, Python workflow/ module layout, rejected legacy keys (package_type, [[metadata.triggers]]), and common footguns.

Step 3: package pack 

cloacinactl package pack <DIR> [--out <PATH>] [--sign <KEY>]

Validates, then packs the source tree into a .cloacina archive (tar + bzip2, manifest resolved to its full form). Build output, VCS dirs, and prior archives are excluded automatically.

# Default output: <DIR>/<name>.cloacina
cloacinactl package pack .

# Custom output path
cloacinactl package pack . --out /tmp/my-workflow-1.0.0.cloacina

--sign fails hard. Workflow-package signing is not implemented (tracked under I-0103): passing --sign makes package pack (and package publish) exit non-zero with an error telling you to remove the flag. Do not script around it — there is currently no way to produce a signed workflow package from the CLI, even though the server can require signatures (--require-signatures). See Package Signing for the current state.

The packed archive is the artifact you upload to the server (package upload) or drop into a daemon’s watch directory.

One-Shot: package publish

When you want build + pack + upload in a single command:

cloacinactl package publish . \
    --release \
    --tenant acme \
    --server https://cloacina.example.com \
    --api-key env:CLOACINA_API_KEY

Equivalent to running package build, package pack, and package upload in sequence. Useful in deploy scripts. (Remember the upload only becomes runnable once a cloacina-compiler service builds it — see below.)

When You Still Need cloacina-compiler

The compiler service is not optional for running Rust packages: an uploaded Rust package sits at build_status = pending until a cloacina-compiler process polling the same database claims and builds it. What’s local-optional is only the pre-upload authoring loop above.

Run the service (locally or in your deployment) when:

  • You want an uploaded Rust package to actually load and execute.
  • Multiple authors submit packages and you want centralized, reproducible builds.
  • You want to enforce build-time policy (vendored dependencies, resource limits, timeouts).
cloacinactl compiler start --database-url "$DATABASE_URL"

Python packages skip the compiler entirely — the server imports them directly at reconcile time.

See Run cloacina-compiler in Production for the service-side deployment posture: threat model, vendor curation, resource limits, audit-event reference.

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