Developer Tools Setup
To enable the best working experience through the hands-on exercises, you need to select the environment you plan to use for development and the required tools for integration with IBM Cloud.
- If you plan to use your desktop/laptop for hands-on exercises, follow the instructions in the Desktop/Laptop tab. You will need a recent macOS or Windows 10 operating system for this option.
- If you cannot install tools on your desktop/laptop, follow the Cloud Shell instructions.
Once you have fulfilled these setup requirements you will be ready to go through the Getting Started steps.
TL;DR
Set up the shell environment by running:
curl -sL shell.cloudnativetoolkit.dev | bash -source ~/.bashrc || source ~/.zshrc
Be sure to follow the instructions provided to enable the changes in the current terminal session.
Introduction to Cloud Shell
IBM Cloud Shell is a free service that gives you complete control of your cloud resources, applications, and infrastructure, from any web browser. It’s instantly accessible from your free IBM Cloud account—no other installation is needed.
Features of IBM Cloud Shell include:
Preconfigured environment: IBM Cloud Shell provides a curated, cloud-based workspace with dozens of preinstalled tools and programming languages. It’s automatically authenticated with your IBM Cloud account so you can start to develop immediately.
File upload/download: use this feature to import files to IBM Cloud Shell or pull-down data to your local machine.
Multiple sessions: use up to five shell sessions at a time to maximize your productivity. Mirror workflows on your local machine, or view logs on one session while editing a file in another.
Accessing the Cloud Shell
Open the IBM Cloud console (cloud.ibm.com) in your browser and log in if needed.
Invoke Cloud Shell by clicking on the button at the top, right-hand corner of the browser window.
Additional tools installation
There are some tools that are assumed to already be available within the shell environment.
Docker client
Docker Desktop is required for working with container images locally, running common tools and using the Developer Tools Image.
Git client
The Git Client needs to be installed in your development operating system to work with Git repositories locally. It comes as standard for Mac OS.
Code editor/IDE
You will be viewing and updating code artifacts. It is important to have a good code editor to make the process easier. If you don’t already have an IDE available, Visual Studio Code is a popular (and free) code editor to use.
You can also enable launching VSCode from a terminal to make it easier to transition from the terminal to the IDE.
Set up the shell environment
We have provided a simplified installer that will install tools and configure the shell environment. The
installer will first check if the required tool is available in the path. If not, the missing tool(s) will be
installed into the bin/ folder of the current user’s home directory and the PATH variable will be updated in the
.bashrc or .zshrc file to include that directory.
The following tools are included in the shell installer:
- IBM Cloud cli (ibmcloud)
- ArgoCD cli (argocd)
- Tekton cli (tkn)
- IBM Cloud fast switching (icc)
- kube-ps1 prompt
- OpenShift cli (oc)
- Kubernetes cli (kubectl)
- JSON cli (jq)
- IBM Garage Cloud CLI (igc)
Set up the shell environment by running:
curl -sL shell.cloudnativetoolkit.dev | bash -source ~/.bashrc || source ~/.zshrcIf successful, you should see something like the following:
Downloading scripts: https://github.com/cloud-native-toolkit/cloud-shell-commands/releases/download/0.3.5/assets.tar.gz** Installing argocd cli** Installing tkn cli** Installing kube-ps1** Installing icc** Installing Cloud-Native Toolkit clikube-ps1 has been installed to display the current Kubernetes context and namespace in the prompt. It can be turned on and off with the following commands:Follow the instruction given at the end of the output to enable the changes in the current terminal session.
You can check the shell was installed correctly by checking the
oc syncversion:oc sync --version
Configure git
Execute the following commands replacing the email and short name:
$ git config --global user.email "<email>"$ git config --global user.name "<short_name>"
Configure IBM Cloud cluster fast-switching (icc)
If you will be working with clusters and services hosted on IBM Cloud, it is highly recommended to use the provided icc
command to simplify the process of switching between clusters. See IBM Cloud cluster fast-switching (icc) for instructions on how to configure and use it.
Cloud-Native Toolkit CLI
One of the tools installed is the Cloud-Native Toolkit CLI, invoked using the igc command. Many of the examples in this guide use commands.