Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
78 lines (67 loc) · 4.94 KB

RedHatOne.md

File metadata and controls

78 lines (67 loc) · 4.94 KB
Raw

Red Hat One - Bonus Lesson

If you are reading this you are attending Redefining Developer Efficiency lab at Red Hat One and you are probably interested in Red Hat Developer Hub (RHDH) Dynamic Plugins feature.

This is a one of the key differentiator between productized RHDH and upstream Backstage project which lacks this feature. This README offers a complete walkthrough through enabling one specific dynamic plugin - Nexus Repository Manager.

Adding a "normal" (static) plugin is a tedious process which requires a complete Backstage image rebuild (which is not an easy task!). At the time of writing (1/2024) Red Hat Developer Hub ships 47 plugins out of the box alongside its image. Vast majority of those are disabled out of the box. But since they are all written as dynamic plugins, enabling them is easy and does not require image rebuild. See following list of steps which highlights differences between using Backstage with static plugins and Red Hat Developer Hub enriched with Dynamic Plugins:

  1. Install NPM into codebase
  2. Change code to use the NPM
  3. Commit, Push, Merge
  4. Rebuild
  5. Release
  6. Change configuration
  7. Commit, Push, Merge
  8. Deploy

Only steps 6/7/8 are required when you want to enable Dynamic Plugin using RHDH. Let's take a closer look at these steps in context of enabling Nexus dynamic plugin.

Step By Step Guide

You need to be logged in as admin user for the below steps to work. Nexus Repository, with the accompanied Docker Registry and example Docker Image has been already set up for you.

  • RHDH instance on this cluster is installed via ArgoCD Application and its GitOps repository is stored in a GitLab repository.
  • Locate GitLab URL 
    export GITLAB_ROUTE=`oc get route gitlab -n gitlab -o jsonpath='{.spec.host}{"\n"}'
  • Clone Backstage GitOps repository 
    git clone https://$GITLAB_ROUTE/gitops/janus-idp-gitops.git
  • Enable Nexus plugin by adding following configuration in backstage-values.yaml file 
    global:
  dynamic:
    plugins:
      - package: ./dynamic-plugins/dist/janus-idp-backstage-plugin-nexus-repository-manager
        disabled: false   
     ....   
 upstream:
   backstage:
     extraEnvVars:
       - name: NEXUS_REPOSITORY_MANAGER_URL
         value: "https://docker-registry-nexus.apps.cluster-ztblf.sandbox3018.opentlc.com"
       - name: NEXUS_REPOSITORY_MANAGER_SECURE
         value: "false"
  • Don't change the Nexus URL! It has been setup only on a single cluster and it does not exist on student cluster!
  • Git Commit & Git Push as user1
  • At this point we need to force ArgoCD Sync for our recent change. This is required due to the fact our values file is configured as a remote file and ArgoCD by default does not track changes in remote files
  • Log into the following ArgoCD instance using admin user 
    oc get route argocd-server -n openshift-gitops -o jsonpath='{.spec.host}{"\n"}'
  • Locate backstage Application and select Hard Refresh as shown in the picture below: Hard Refresh
  • This will force the backstage pod to restart with our new configuration changes applied. The restart process usually takes a couple of minutes - this is because init container processes every plugin on Backstage pod startup.
  • Log in to the Backstage instance and create a catalog entry based on the provided Securing a Quarkus Service Software Supply Chain template.
  • Locate this new entry in the corresponding GitLab repository and apply following changes into to catalog-info.yaml which is located at the root of your repository:
metadata:
  annotations:
    nexus-repository-manager/docker.image-name: backstage-test
    nexus-repository-manager/docker.image-tag: latest
  • !! Don't change the annotation values, there is only one example image provided for this excercise and its name and tag is backstage-test:latest
  • Save the changes in catalog-info.yaml file
  • Documentation on the supported annotation values for nexus plugin can be found here:
  • Locate your new component in the Backstage UI and click Image Registry tab. If everything has been set up correctly you should see: Docker Registry Nexus In Backstage
    • Note that it might take couple of minutes for changes to take affect. Consider also trying Anonymous Browser window

Conclusion

In this repository we have successfully demonstrated how we can leverage RHDH Dynamic Plugins feature. It's a key differentiator from the upstream Backstage project and if you ever had to add a new static plugin to your Backstage instance you understand how drastically simplified the process of working with Dynamic Plugins is. This is a powerful RHDH feature, so let's make sure our customers are aware of it!