Creating a new Windows VM image for Bazel's CI

The key thing to keep in mind is that the Windows setup for Jenkins has nothing magic about it that makes it a Jenkins slave VM. It's just a normal Windows setup with a few pre-installed tools that you would install on a workstation anyway. The Jenkins-specific setup is then handled completely automatic by the PowerShell script in gce/jenkins-slave-windows-2016.ps1.

Necessary steps

  • Create a new GCE VM with Windows Server 2016.

  • Temporarily enable RDP access to the VM via:

    • gcloud compute firewall-rules create $USER-rdp --allow=tcp:3389,udp:3389 --source-ranges=$(curl v4.ifconfig.co)/32

  • Set a new Windows password, note it somewhere and connect via RDP.

  • Server Manager -> Configure this local server

    • Deactivate Windows Firewall.
    • Deactivate Windows Defender.
    • Deactivate IE Enhanced Security Configuration.
    • Set time zone to Europe/Berlin.

  • Download and install Google Chrome. Pin to taskbar, unpin IE.

  • Settings -> Update & security

    • For developers -> [x] Developer mode. Click all three “Apply” buttons below.
    • Windows Update -> Advanced options -> Check “Give me updates for other Microsoft products”.
    • Windows Update -> Check updates, then install all updates.
      • Reboot if necessary.
      • Repeat until no more updates are found.

  • Go to https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/

    • Download latest stable Python 3.x (64-Bit).
    • Start installation.
      • Check “Install launcher for all users”.
      • Check “Add Python to PATH”.
      • Customize installation, check all boxes.
      • Check “Install for all users”.
      • Customize install location: C:\Python3
      • When setup is complete, click “Disable path length limit”, then close setup.

  • Go to http://www.msys2.org/

    • Download latest x86_64 msys2 setup.
    • Install to C:\msys64.
    • Launch msys2 shell from installer, run “pacman -Syuu”, forcibly close terminal window when prompted.
    • Launch “MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit” shell, run “pacman -Syuu”, install all updates.
    • Run “pacman -S git curl zip unzip gcc zlib-devel isl tar patch”.

  • Go to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html

    • Download and install latest “Windows x64” JDK 8.

  • Go to http://landinghub.visualstudio.com/visual-cpp-build-tools

    • Download “Visual C++ Build Tools 2015”.
    • Start installation, choose “Custom”, select all options, install.

  • Go to https://nssm.cc/download

    • Download “nssm 2.24-101-g897c7ad (2017-04-26)” or later build.
    • Create new folder: “C:\Program Files\nssm”.
    • Extract nssm.exe from the download ZIP file's “win64” folder into the just created folder.

  • Start -> Search for “path” -> Choose “Edit the system environment variables”

    • Click “Environment Variables”. Do the following actions in the lower “System variables” part of the UI.
    • Add “C:\Program Files\nssm” to the PATH variable.
    • Set BAZEL_VC to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC”
    • Set BAZEL_SH to “C:\msys64\usr\bin\bash.exe”
    • Set JAVA_HOME to “C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_152” (or the latest version installed)

  • Start -> Type “GCESysprep”, run it.

    • The system will shut down and prepare itself for being used as an image to create new VMs.