Unikube Wiki

# Developing with Unikube

The Unikube CLI is based on Python and uses pip for the installation. Thus, please make sure that pip is installed. If you need help - have a look at the official pip installation guide (opens new window).

The following command makes the Unikube CLI available on your machine:

sudo pip install unikube

Unikube needs some other packages to do it’s magic. To verify if all the packages are available, run:

unikube system verify

If all checks are completed successfully skip the next step.

Otherwise, run:

unikube system install

...and verify again:

unikube system verify

Everything should be in place to run a Kubernetes on your machine. Time to login!

unikube login

Feel free to close the login tab after a successful login. Let’s list the available projects:

unikube project list

At this point, you should see the project created in the "Online Project Creation" section. Neat! Let's spin it up:

unikube project up

After a short time, you’ve got a running and provisioned Kubernetes cluster.

Let's install the deck containing the application:

unikube deck install

TIP

Run following command inspect the current state of your cluster

watch unikube app list --deck buzzword-counter

After some time you've got your cluster setup with your application. That was simple, wasn’t it?

As good old Steve Jobs said - we’ve got one more thing (and it is pretty amazing!):

let’s switch a running docker container from your machine into the cluster.

First, we create a unikube.yaml file, which provides information about the image and how it should be integrated into the cluster.

version: "1"

apps:
  buzzword-counter:
    deployment: buzzword-counter-web
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
      options:
        - compress
    env:
      - DJANGO_DEBUG: "True"
    command: python manage.py collectstatic --noinput --ignore src; python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:{port}
    volumes:
      - .:/code

This example file is taken from our buzzword counter application. (opens new window) It describes the app to be switched into the local cluster. If you’ve worked with docker-compose before it should look pretty familiar.

  • build provides the build arguments for the docker image for the container to be built.

  • env allows you to overwrite environment variables within the running container.

  • command is the command to be executed within the container.

  • volume allows you to add a volume mapping from your local disk to the container running in the cluster. This enables pretty cool things like hot code reloading.

You can find the helm charts for the buzzword counter here (opens new window).

Now we’re set to execute the switch command:

unikube app switch

Unikube switches the images and shows you the output of your command.

Done. Amazing!!!

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