Creating a platform

Overview

If you need a platform that’s not already available in our platforms repository it’s pretty easy to create a new one based on an existing one.

Platforms are Docker images that are used to deploy your application code on tsuru. tsuru provides a base image which platform developers can use to build upon: base-platform. This platform provides a base deployment script, which handles package downloading and extraction in proper path, along with operating system package management.

Every platform in the repository extends the base-platform adding the specifics of each platform. They are a great way to learn how to create a new one.

An example

Let’s suppose we wanted to create a nodejs platform. First, let’s define it’s Dockerfile:

FROM        tsuru/base-platform
ADD . /var/lib/tsuru/nodejs
RUN cp /var/lib/tsuru/nodejs/deploy /var/lib/tsuru
RUN /var/lib/tsuru/nodejs/install

In this file, we are extending the tsuru/base-platform, adding our deploy and install scripts to the right place: /var/lib/tsuru.

The install script runs when we add or update the platform on tsuru. It’s the perfect place to install dependencies that every application on it’s platform needs:

#!/bin/bash -le

SOURCE_DIR=/var/lib/tsuru
source ${SOURCE_DIR}/base/rc/config

apt-get update
apt-get install git -y
git clone https://github.com/creationix/nvm.git /etc/nvm
cd /etc/nvm && git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags`

cat >> ${HOME}/.profile <<EOF
if [ -e ${HOME}/.nvm_bin ]; then
    export PATH="${HOME}/.nvm_bin:$PATH"
fi
EOF

As it can be seen, we are just installing some dependencies and preparing the environment for our applications. The ${SOURCE_DIR}/base/rc/config provides some bootstrap configuration that are usually needed.

Now, let’s define our deploy script, which runs every time a deploy occurs:

#!/bin/bash -le

SOURCE_DIR=/var/lib/tsuru
source ${SOURCE_DIR}/base/rc/config
source ${SOURCE_DIR}/base/deploy

export NVM_DIR=${HOME}/.nvm
[ ! -e ${NVM_DIR} ] && mkdir -p ${NVM_DIR}

. /etc/nvm/nvm.sh

nvm install stable

rm -f ~/.nvm_bin
ln -s $NVM_BIN ~/.nvm_bin

if [ -f ${CURRENT_DIR}/package.json ]; then
    pushd $CURRENT_DIR && npm install --production
    popd
fi

Once again we run some base scripts to do some heavy lifting: ${SOURCE_DIR}/base/rc/config and ${SOURCE_DIR}/base/deploy. After that, it’s just a matter of application specifics dependencies using npm.

Now, we can move on and add our newly created platform.

Adding your platform to tsuru

After creating you platform as a Dockerfile, you can add it to tsuru using the client:

$ tsuru platform add your-platform-name --dockerfile http://url-to-dockerfile

If you push your image to an Docker Registry, you can use:

$ tsuru platform add your-platform-name -i your-user/image-name