GETTING_STARTED.md

Getting Started

• Prerequisites
• Installing
  • Mac Installation
  • Linux Installation
  • Windows Installation
• Local Setup
  • Passing kubeconfig explicitly
  • Passing a context list
  • Skipping initialization steps

Prerequisites

You must have access to a Kubernetes cluster with Helm charts installed and the Docker engine must be running on your machine.

Installing

Mac Installation

Run the following command to grab the latest binary:

{
name=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/porter-dev/porter/releases/latest | grep "browser_download_url.*_Darwin_x86_64\.zip" | cut -d ":" -f 2,3 | tr -d \")
name=$(basename $name)
curl -L https://github.com/porter-dev/porter/releases/latest/download/$name --output $name
unzip -a $name
rm $name
}

Then move the file into your bin:

chmod +x ./porter
sudo mv ./porter /usr/local/bin/porter

Linux Installation

Run the following command to grab the latest binary:

{
name=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/porter-dev/porter/releases/latest | grep "browser_download_url.*_Linux_x86_64\.zip" | cut -d ":" -f 2,3 | tr -d \")
name=$(basename $name)
curl -L https://github.com/porter-dev/porter/releases/latest/download/$name --output $name
unzip -a $name
rm $name
}

Then move the file into your bin:

chmod +x ./porter
sudo mv ./porter /usr/local/bin/porter

Windows Installation

Go here to download the Windows executable and add the binary to your PATH.

Local Setup

Note: the local setup process is tracked in issue #60, while the overall onboarding flow is tracked in issue #50.

To view Porter locally, you must have access to a Kubernetes cluster with Helm charts installed. The simplest way to run Porter is via porter start. This command will read the current-context that's set in your default kubeconfig (either by reading the $KUBECONFIG env variable or reading from $HOME/.kube/config). To view all options for start, type porter start --help. By default, the command performs the following steps:

1. Requests an admin account is created and writes the result to the local keychain (Mac), wincred (Windows), or pass (Linux).
2. Reads the default kubeconfig and populates certificates required by the current context.
3. Starts Porter as a Docker container with a persistent storage volume attached (by default, the volume will be called porter_sqlite).

Passing kubeconfig explicitly

You can pass a path to a kubeconfig file explicitly via:

porter start --kubeconfig path/to/kubeconfig

Passing a context list

You can initialize Porter with a set of contexts by passing a context list to start. The contexts that Porter will be able to access are the same as kubectl config get-contexts. For example, if I had two contexts named minikube and staging, I would be able to visualize both of them via:

porter start --contexts minikube --contexts staging

Skipping Initialization Steps

To skip setting the admin account and/or the kubeconfig, porter start provides the --insecure and --skip-kubeconfig options.