balena-cloud-apps

This is a free NodeJS script to package the containers native interface BalenaOS for the Raspberry Pi and similar platforms.

The open source Balena-CLI is required, first install Balena-CLI on the host that's sending command lines.

Within an open source application, like balena-sound, wifi-repeater, install this module:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
cd application
yarn add balena-cloud-apps
npm link balena-cloud-apps

Template fields

(BALENA_PROJECTS_FLAGS) take variable names %%templates_var%% that are replaced by ther value in <arch>.env Make changes to the Dockerfile.template files.

Initialize .env and package.json:

post_install

It will scan for any Docker files in the sub-folders and reset package.json, common.env and <arch>.env files.

Configure template environment

Complete common definitions (leading and trailing ( spaces ) when defining arrays !!):

BALENA_PROJECTS=( MY/PATH MY/RELATIVE/PATH )
BALENA_PROJECTS_FLAGS=( BALENA_MACHINE_NAME MY_VARIABLE )

Define architectures: An ARM computer units like Raspberry PI use armhf.env (or aarch64.env if it's deployed on a 64 bits platform), desktop units are often x86_64.env:

BALENA_ARCH=x86_64
BALENA_MACHINE_NAME=intel-nuc
IMG_TAG=latest
PRIMARY_HUB=docker-hub-balenalib-repo\\/container-servìce-image

Test

Run unit tests on local host or CI

yarn test

Build dependencies

Docker Image dependencies are required to validate test units. Theses dependencies include build images needed by Docker based environments:

• Docker and Balena Cloud platform (DockerHub, etc.)
• CircleCI, TravisCI, etc.

First login to Docker or Balena, if you already have an account or create one.

docker login or balena login

The folder deployments contains Dockerfile templates that maybe pulled from Docker.

balena_deploy test/build/

Finally select the corresponding architecture ARM32, ARM64 bits or X86-64 (choose 1, 2 or 3) and choose to build dependencies

It takes a few minutes for the docker machine to pull, update local images and to push them to the repository. They take the name $DOCKER_USER/<image> and get a public URL at https://hub.docker.com/r/$DOCKER_USER/<image>

Deploy

Deploy to Docker or BalenaOS, easy, choose targets:

balena_deploy .

You can build locally:

docker_build . . <DOCKER_USER>/<IMAGE>:<TAG> <BALENA_ARCH>

In BASH scripts, use arguments:

balena_deploy . x86_64 --nobuild --exit
balena_deploy . armhf --balena

Updating and managing npm version

Follow general guidelines in the documention about versioning this project on npm

Basically, commit all your changes and bump to the next version, then push tags:

# version string without the leading "v."
npm version "0.0.1"
git push --tags

The continuous integration system will detect the new version tag and deploy to NPMJS if all build steps succeed.

CLI functions

All endpoints in command line shell scripts are registered in package.json. When balena-cloud-apps installs itself, the functions become available to environment PATH.