CHAI

CHAI is an attempt at an open-source data pipeline for package managers. The goal is to have a pipeline that can use the data from any package manager and provide a normalized data source for myriads of different use cases.

Getting Started

Use Docker

1. Install Docker
2. Clone the chai repository (https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/cloning-a-repository)
3. Using a terminal, navigate to the cloned repository directory
4. Run docker compose build to create the latest Docker images
5. Then, run docker compose up to launch.

Note

This will run CHAI for all package managers. As an example crates by itself will take over an hour and consume >5GB storage.

Currently, we support only two package managers:

• crates
• Homebrew

You can run a single package manager by running docker compose up -e ... <package_manager>

We are planning on supporting NPM, PyPI, and rubygems next.

Arguments

Specify these eg. docker compose -e FOO=bar up:

• FREQUENCY: Sets how often (in hours) the pipeline should run.
• TEST: Runs the loader in test mode when set to true, skipping certain data insertions.
• FETCH: Determines whether to fetch new data from the source when set to true.
• NO_CACHE: When set to true, deletes temporary files after processing.

Note

The flag NO_CACHE does not mean that files will not get downloaded to your local storage, just that we'll delete the files once we're done with them

These arguments are all configurable in the docker-compose.yml file.

Docker Services Overview

1. db: PostgreSQL database for the reduced package data
2. alembic: handles migrations
3. package_managers: fetches and writes data for each package manager
4. api: a simple REST api for reading from the db

Hard Reset

Stuff happens. Start over:

rm -rf ./data: removes all the data the fetcher is putting.

Goals

Our goal is to build a data schema that looks like this:

You can read more about specific data models in the dbs readme

Our specific application extracts the dependency graph understand what are critical pieces of the open-source graph. We also built a simple example that displays sbom-metadata for your repository.

There are many other potential use cases for this data:

• License compatibility checker
• Developer publications
• Package popularity
• Dependency analysis vulnerability tool (requires translating semver)

Tip

Help us add the above to the examples folder.

FAQs / Common Issues

1. The database url is postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai, and is used as CHAI_DATABASE_URL in the environment. psql CHAI_DATABASE_URL will connect you to the database.

Tasks

These are tasks that can be run using [xcfile.dev]. If you use pkgx, typing dev loads the environment. Alternatively, run them manually.

reset

rm -rf db/data data .venv

build

docker compose build

start

Requires: build

docker compose up -d

test

Env: TEST=true Env: DEBUG=true

docker compose up

full-test

Requires: build Env: TEST=true Env: DEBUG=true

docker compose up

stop

docker compose down

logs

docker compose logs

db-reset

Requires: stop

rm -rf db/data

db-generate-migration

Inputs: MIGRATION_NAME Env: CHAI_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai

cd alembic
alembic revision --autogenerate -m "$MIGRATION_NAME"

db-upgrade

Env: CHAI_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai

cd alembic
alembic upgrade head

db-downgrade

Inputs: STEP Env: CHAI_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai

cd alembic
alembic downgrade -$STEP

db

psql "postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai"

db-list-packages

psql "postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai" -c "SELECT count(id) FROM packages;"

db-list-history

psql "postgresql://postgres:s3cr3t@localhost:5435/chai" -c "SELECT * FROM load_history;"

restart-api

Refreshes table knowledge from the db.

docker-compose restart api

remove-orphans

docker compose down --remove-orphans