Build
A provider archive (also called a par file) is an archive file (in unix 'tar' format) containing platform-specific executable files for a variety of CPU and OS combinations. A typical provider archive file contains executables for 64-bit Linux, x86_64 macOs, aarch64 macOs, and other supported platforms. The par file includes a cryptographically signed JSON Web Token (JWT) that contains a set of claims attestations for the capability provider.
A provider archive can be uploaded to, or downloaded from, OCI registries.
Build​
Providers are always compiled in "release" mode. wash has support to compile a capability provider for your native target with wash build, as long as a wasmcloud.toml file is present. The following section will continue on from the Create page where we built a NATS messaging provider, but you can follow the same steps for any capability provider project.
> wash build
Built artifact can be found at "/Users/wasmcloud/messaging-nats/build/wasmcloud-example-messaging-nats.par.gz"
The wash command creates a private issuer seed key if there isn't one already. Additionally, it generates a seed key for the provider archive itself, and stores it in a file called wasmcloud-example-messaging-nats_service.nk. The wash CLI will continue to re-use these keys for signing future versions of this provider archive—keep all keys secret—they are used by the lattice to know that updates were created by the same author as the original When you move your provider to production you will want to pass explicit paths to the signing keys so that you can control the issuer and subject fields of the embedded token.
Inspect​
We can use wash to inspect a provider archive as well (primary key has been truncated to fit documentation):
> wash par inspect ./build/wasmcloud-example-messaging-nats.par.gz
Messaging NATS - Capability Provider
Account ACVPZZJPNCTXHR3IAVKVD4FSJTNIX43O4EXPKXNWUYGG2T4KZG2XDQDI
Service VDVLZBMLFOAWLXFW3K47K3JEO5NWH35ZARWICRMHUEEQAWHGSMDJPP4X
Vendor Example Vendor
Version 0.1.0
Revision 0
Supported Architecture Targets
aarch64-macos
Support Multiple Architectures​
wash build has support for creating a provider archive with the locally installed toolchain. If you need to support multiple architectures, you can use wash par to insert additional binaries into your archive.
The following example walks through creating an initial provider archive, using cargo with an appropriate toolchain to cross-compile for the x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu architecture, and then inserting the additional binary into the archive.
Due to the complexity of compiling for different architectures and operating systems, wash does not have support for building targets other than the native target.
# Create the initial provider archive
wash build
# Build for an additional target (assuming you have the correct toolchain installed)
cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
# Insert the additional binary into the archive
wash par insert /path/to/archive.par.gz --binary ./target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/debug/provider-binary --arch x86_64-linux
This process can be repeated as necessary to add additional targets. You can use wash inspect in order to verify that your additional architectures are properly inserted in the archive.
> wash inspect ghcr.io/wasmcloud/messaging-nats:canary
messaging-nats-provider - Capability Provider
Account ACOJJN6WUP4ODD75XEBKKTCCUJJCY5ZKQ56XVKYK4BEJWGVAOOQHZMCW
Service VADNMSIML2XGO2X4TPIONTIC55R2UUQGPPDZPAVSC2QD7E76CR77SPW7
Vendor wasmcloud
Version 0.19.0
Revision None
Supported Architecture Targets
aarch64-macos
x86_64-linux
aarch64-linux
x86_64-windows
x86_64-macos
With the build complete, now we can continue to testing.