Environment variables

Using a private tipi.build instance: TIPI_ENDPOINT

tipi.build can be run on premise or in a private deployment. All users of that deployment need to specify TIPI_ENDPOINT in their environment to their tipi CLI to access the correct installation.

Command line authentication

In non-interactive situation (a CI/CD job, other automated usages) it might be required to provide the tipi CLI with credentials to access private repositories or make use of the tipi subscription.

  • TIPI_ACCESS_TOKEN and TIPI_REFRESH_TOKEN are JWT tokens enabling tipi to get access to the tipi subscription.
  • TIPI_VAULT_PASSPHRASE has to be supplied in situations where the user's Vault must be decrypted (ex. accessing private repositories)

Customizing tools distribution TIPI_DISTRO_JSON

Tipi uses a JSON file which contains the required tools used by tipi to build projects (like cmake or make). These tools are automatically downloaded and installed on demand by tipi at run-time before running projects build.

The contents of the file can be changed as per your needs for maximum usage flexibility setting the environment variable TIPI_DISTRO_JSON.

The environment variable may point to:

  • an absolute or relative file path
  • an HTTP(s) URL

The original JSON file can be found at https://github.com/tipi-build/distro/blob/master/distro.json

Below some examples of what you can set as TIPI_DISTRO_JSON:

export TIPI_DISTRO_JSON="~/projects/tipi/distro.json"
- or -
export TIPI_DISTRO_JSON="/home/user/projects/tipi/distro.json"
- or -
export TIPI_DISTRO_JSON="https://company.com/tipi/distro.json"

If TIPI_DISTRO_JSON is a HTTP(s) URL, tipi will download the file and check file integrity against the value in the environment variable TIPI_DISTRO_JSON_SHA1

Customizing tools distribution TIPI_DISTRO_JSON_SHA1

When a customized TIPI_DISTRO_JSON is downloaded via HTTP(s) tipi performs an integrity check by checking the sha1sum of the downloaded file against the value of TIPI_DISTRO_JSON_SHA1.

For example:

export TIPI_DISTRO_JSON="https://company/tipi/distro.json"
export TIPI_DISTRO_JSON_SHA1="4eb777d088ea949709e9ea97bbc8c389a63856e2"

Distro installation mode TIPI_DISTRO_MODE

By default tipi only installs the subset of the build tools required to build remotely using the tipi.build cloud. For local builds you can install force the installation of the required tools locally.

For example:

export TIPI_DISTRO_MODE="all" # "full" install - takes ~7gb in TIPI_HOME_DIR 
 - or -
export TIPI_DISTRO_MODE="default" # "light" install for remote builds

Found an error or want to add more info? Write an issue or contribute changes to this documentation at tipi-build/docs on