Building OPA

Building OPA

The instructions specify the steps to build OPA version 1.15.2 on Linux on IBM Z for following distributions:

• RHEL (8.10, 9.4, 9.6, 9.7, 10.0, 10.1)
• Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04, 25.10)

General Notes:

• When following the steps below please use a standard permission user unless otherwise specified.
• A directory /<source_root>/ will be referred to in these instructions, this is a temporary writable directory anywhere you'd like to place it.

1. Build environment set up

Ensure that Docker-CE is installed.

Ensure the current user belongs to group docker.

Use the below command to add group docker if it does not exist:

sudo groupadd docker

Use the below command to add current user to group docker if it has not been done:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

2. Build using script

If you want to build OPA using manual steps, go to STEP 3.

Use the following commands to build OPA using the build script. Please make sure you have wget installed.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linux-on-ibm-z/scripts/master/OPA/1.15.2/build_opa.sh

# Build OPA
bash build_opa.sh   [Provide -t option for executing build with tests]

If the build and tests complete successfully, go to STEP 6. In case of error, check logs at <source_root>/logs/ for more details or go to STEP 3 to follow manual build steps.

3. Install the system dependencies

export SOURCE_ROOT=/<source_root>/
export PATCH_URL="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linux-on-ibm-z/scripts/master/OPA/1.15.2/patch"

• RHEL (8.10, 9.4, 9.6, 9.7, 10.0, 10.1)

  sudo yum install -y gcc git make python3 python3-pip tar wget xz

• Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04, 25.10)

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git python3 python3-pip tar wget

4. Install prerequisites

4.1. Install Go 1.26.2

cd $SOURCE_ROOT
GO_VERSION=1.26.2
wget -q https://go.dev/dl/go"${GO_VERSION}".linux-s390x.tar.gz
chmod ugo+r go"${GO_VERSION}".linux-s390x.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go"${GO_VERSION}".linux-s390x.tar.gz
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/s390x-linux-gnu-gcc  # Rhel and Sles only
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
go version

4.2. Install wasmtime library

cd $SOURCE_ROOT
mkdir golang-wasmtime && cd golang-wasmtime
wget -q https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/releases/download/v39.0.1/wasmtime-v39.0.1-s390x-linux-c-api.tar.xz
tar xf wasmtime-v39.0.1-s390x-linux-c-api.tar.xz
sudo cp wasmtime-v39.0.1-s390x-linux-c-api/lib/libwasmtime.a /usr/lib

5. Build OPA

5.1. Build OPA from source

cd $SOURCE_ROOT
git clone -b v1.15.2 https://github.com/open-policy-agent/opa.git
cd opa
curl -sSL $PATCH_URL/opa.diff | git apply -
make build

Note: In case of errors encountered while cloning the OPA repository, you might try increasing the POST buffer size:

git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000
git config --global https.postBuffer 1048576000

5.2. Build OPA Docker image

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/opa
make image-s390x  # For RHEL and Ubuntu

5.3. Run OPA tests (Optional)

5.3.1. Run unit tests

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/opa
make test

Note:

• Several timeout tests and related failures can be addressed by re-running tests after changing the timeout value as follows:

sed -i "1855s,100,110,g" v1/runtime/runtime_test.go

6. Verify build is successful (Optional)

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/opa
./opa_linux_s390x run

Please refer to Running OPA for more information

Reference:

• https://www.openpolicyagent.org/docs/latest/contrib-development/