Local Registry

Skill: Local OCI Registry

Purpose

Start and manage a local OCI registry for development. This allows building and publishing kits locally without requiring external registry access.

When to Use

• Developing changes to kits that need to be consumed by variants
• Testing kit changes before publishing to production registries
• Working offline or in isolated environments

Prerequisites

• Docker installed and running
• Working from within a grove directory

Procedure

Start the registry

brdev registry start

This will:

• Start a local Docker registry on localhost:5000
• Configure persistence (registry data survives restarts)
• Wait for the registry to be healthy before returning
• Output the registry URL for use in builds

Verify registry is running

brdev registry status

Returns exit code 0 if running, non-zero otherwise.

Get registry URL

brdev registry url

Outputs localhost:{port} for the current grove. Use this in scripts instead of hardcoding ports.

View registry logs

brdev registry logs

To follow logs in real-time:

brdev registry logs --follow

Stop the registry

brdev registry stop

Note: This preserves the registry data volume.

Clean registry data

brdev registry clean

This removes both the container and the data volume.

Configuration

brdev uses environment variables for configuration. Create a .env file in the forest root or set environment variables:

# Custom image (default: registry:2)
BRDEV_REGISTRY_IMAGE=registry:2.8

Note: Container and volume names are automatically derived from the grove name as brdev-registry-{grove} and brdev-registry-data-{grove}. The port is auto-derived from a hash of the grove name (range 5001-5999).

Validation

After starting the registry:

brdev registry list

Should return: {"repositories":[]}

Common Issues

Docker not installed:

Error: Docker is not installed or not in PATH. Install Docker and ensure it's in your PATH

Solution: Install Docker and ensure it's in your PATH.

Docker daemon not running:

Error: Docker daemon is not running. Start Docker with: sudo systemctl start docker

Solution: Start the Docker daemon.

Port already in use:

Error: Failed to start container. The port may already be in use

Solution:

• Check for existing registry: docker ps | grep registry
• Stop conflicting container: docker stop <container-id>
• Or use a custom port via FORESTER_REGISTRY_PORT

Permission denied:

• Ensure user is in docker group: groups | grep docker
• Add user to docker group: sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
• May need to restart shell after adding to group

Related Skills

• build-kit-locally - Uses local registry to publish built kits
• build-variant-from-local-kits - Configures variant builds to use local registry

See Also

Configuration commands for local registry usage:

For publishing kits:

• brdev twoliter use-local-publish - Create Infra.toml for publishing to local registry
• brdev twoliter use-upstream-publish - Remove Infra.toml

For fetching kits:

• brdev twoliter use-local-deps - Create Twoliter.override for fetching from local registry
• brdev twoliter use-upstream-deps - Remove Twoliter.override

Both (convenience):

• brdev twoliter use-local - Create both files
• brdev twoliter use-upstream - Remove both files

When fetching, also set vendor = "local" in Twoliter.toml for specific kits you want from the local registry.