How to Build Istio?

This article will guide you on how to compile the Istio binaries on macOS.

  • May 15, 2022
  • Istio
  • 2 Minute
  • 490 words
Copyright
This is an original article by Jimmy Song. You may repost it, but please credit this source: https://jimmysong.io/en/blog/how-to-build-istio/

This article will guide you on how to compile the Istio binaries and Docker images on macOS.

Before you begin

Before we start, refer to the Istio Wiki, here is the information about my build environment.

  • macOS 12.3.1 Darwin AMD64
  • Docker Desktop 4.8.1(78998)
  • Docker Engine v20.10.14

Start to compile

First, download the Istio code from GitHub to the $GOPATH/src/istio.io/istio directory, and execute the commands below in that root directory.

Compile into binaries

Execute the following command to download the Istio dependent packages, which will be downloaded to the vendor directory.

go mod vendor

Run the following command to build Istio:

sudo make build

If you do not run the command with sudo, you may encounter the following error.

fatal: unsafe repository ('/work' is owned by someone else)
To add an exception for this directory, call:

	git config --global --add safe.directory /work
fatal: unsafe repository ('/work' is owned by someone else)
To add an exception for this directory, call:

	git config --global --add safe.directory /work
Makefile.core.mk:170: *** "TAG cannot be empty".  Stop.
make: *** [build] Error 2

Even if you follow the prompts and run git config --global --add safe.directory /work, you will still get errors during compilation.

The compiled binary will be saved in out directory with the following directory structure.

out
├── darwin_amd64
│   ├── bug-report
│   ├── client
│   ├── envoy
│   ├── extauthz
│   ├── install-cni
│   ├── istio-cni
│   ├── istio-cni-taint
│   ├── istio-iptables
│   ├── istio_is_init
│   ├── istioctl
│   ├── logs
│   ├── operator
│   ├── pilot-agent
│   ├── pilot-discovery
│   ├── release
│   └── server
└── linux_amd64
    ├── envoy
    ├── envoy-centos
    ├── logs
    └── release

It will build both the linux_amd64 and darwin_amd64 architectures binaries at the same time.

Compile into Docker images

Run the following command to compile Istio into a Docker image.

sudo make docker

The compilation will take about 3 to 5 minutes depending on your network. Once the compilation is complete, you will see the Docker image of Istio by running the following command.

$ docker images
REPOSITORY                                         TAG                          IMAGE ID       CREATED              SIZE
localhost:5000/app_sidecar_centos_7                latest                       2044037df94b   51 seconds ago       524MB
localhost:5000/app_sidecar_ubuntu_jammy            latest                       5d8ae5ed55b7   About a minute ago   362MB
localhost:5000/proxyv2                             latest                       d4679412385f   About a minute ago   243MB
localhost:5000/install-cni                         latest                       78f46d5771d2   About a minute ago   270MB
localhost:5000/istioctl                            latest                       c38130a5adc8   About a minute ago   190MB
localhost:5000/pilot                               latest                       2aa9185ec202   About a minute ago   190MB
localhost:5000/app                                 latest                       473adafaeb8d   About a minute ago   188MB
localhost:5000/operator                            latest                       9ac1fedcdd12   About a minute ago   191MB
localhost:5000/ext-authz                           latest                       1fb5aaf20791   About a minute ago   117MB
localhost:5000/app_sidecar_debian_11               latest                       61376a02b95d   2 minutes ago        407MB
localhost:5000/app_sidecar_ubuntu_xenial           latest                       7e8efe666611   2 minutes ago        418MB

You can change the image name and push it into your own container registry.

Summary

This is how to build Istio on macOS. If you have already downloaded the Docker image you need to build, the build will take less than a minute. It also takes only a few minutes to build Docker images.

Reference

Last updated on Dec 11, 2024

Istio