Fix onboarding docs (#213)

Author: Nikolas De Giorgis

docs/build_operator_locally.md

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+# Quick start for building and deploy the operator locally
+
+This document contains a quickstart guide to build and deploy the operator locally.
+
+
+## Prerequisites
+This guide assumes that you have already installed the following tools:
+
+* [Kind](https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/)
+* [Docker](https://www.docker.com/)
+* [Kubectl](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/)
+
+
+## Steps
+
+1. Create a local kubernetes cluster and start a local registry by running
+
+```sh
+./scripts/dev/setup_kind_cluster.sh
+```
+
+2. Build and deploy the operator:
+
+```sh
+python ./scripts/dev/build_and_deploy_operator
+```
+
+Note: this will build and push the operator at `repo_url/mongodb-kubernetes-operator`, where `repo_url` is extracted from the [dev config file](./contributing.md#developing-locally)
+
+3. Change the [operator yaml file](../deploy/operator.yaml) `image` field to have the image you just built
+
+4. You can now deploy your resources following the [docs](../docs/README.md)
+
+
+## Troubleshooting
+If you run into an issue in step 1, you can try the following steps as workaround:
+1. Manually build the operator Dockerfile
+```sh
+python ./scripts/dev/dockerfile_generator.py > Dockerfile
+```
+
+2. Build the image
+```sh
+docker build . -t localhost:5000/mongodb-kubernetes-operator
+```
+
+3. Push the image
+```sh
+docker push localhost:5000/mongodb-kubernetes-operator
+```

docs/contributing.md

@@ -62,6 +62,8 @@ your tests. The `repo_url` sets the Docker registry. In my case I have a
 this file, set the `MONGODB_COMMUNITY_CONFIG` env variable to the absolute path
 of this file.
 
+Please see [here](./build_operator_locally.md) to see how to build and deploy the operator locally.
+
 ## Configure Docker registry
 
 The build process consist in multiple Docker images being built, you need to specify
@@ -117,14 +119,27 @@ replica_set_scale
 The tests should run individually using the runner like this:
 
 ```sh
-# python scripts/dev/e2e.py <test-name>
+# python scripts/dev/e2e.py --test <test-name>
 # for example
 python scripts/dev/e2e.py --test replica_set
 ```
 
 This will run the `replica_set` E2E test which is a simple test that installs a
 MongoDB Replica Set and asserts that the deployed server can be connected to.
 
+
+The python script has several flags to control its behaviour, please run
+
+```sh
+python scripts/dev/e2e.py --help
+```
+
+to get a list.
+
+## Troubleshooting
+When you run a test locally, if the `operator-sdk-test` pod is present, you will have to
+first manually delete it; failing to do so will cause the `test-runner` pod to fail.
+
 # Writing new E2E tests
 
 You can start with `replica_set` test as an starting point to write a new test.