Introduction

As a micro-services application grows, so does the need for a clear, coherent, and easy way to manage the set-up processes of all the components that make up the application.

Existing Solutions

Two existing solutions to this problem involve containers and virtual machines. For a comparison between the two, checkout Pete Brey's article: https://blog.netapp.com/blogs/containers-vs-vms/

The Devly Solution

Devly is neither a containerization nor a virtual machine solution. It is a command line utility made up of composeable plugins built on node and npm. Each plugin abstracts out the low-level details of an application's set-up process and rolls it into a cli command.

With Devly, developers can leverage the power of their host machine and avoid the complexities of mounting files and folders into guest operating systems.

Integrating Your First App Into Devly

Create a separate repo for your app set-up cli tool.

Initialize and Install Dependencies

• Run npm init

• Run npm install --save @devly/devly-store @devly/devly-cli winston redux

Create Directories and Files

├── cli
    ├── top-level-command-1
    ├── top-level-command-2
    ├── top-level-command-3
    └── index.js
├── manifests
    ├── plugin-1
    ├── plugin-2
    ├── plugin-3
    └── index.js
├── plugins
    ├── plugin-1
    ├── plugin-2
    ├── plugin-3
    └── index.js
└── index.js

manifests directory

Manifest files export a javascript object that serves as the initial state for the corresponding plugin.

plugins directory

The plugins directory consists of files that compose the manifest with the corresponding action creator which then gets dispatched to the devly store. Note it is recommened to use a barrel file to manage all of your apps plugins.

Make sure to install your plugin as a dependency first.

const {store} = require('@devly/devly-store');
const {addApacheConfig, addApacheCommands} = require('@devly/devly-apache/actions');
const {dispatch} = store;

require('@devly/devly-apache');

dispatch(addApacheConfig(require('./manifests/apache')));
dispatch(addApacheCommands());

Define and Install Your Root CLI Command

Update your package.json to include a bin object.

{
  ...,
  "bin": {
    "dev-test": "./index.js"
  },
  ...
}

Make sure ./index.js includes the hashbang at the top of the file; and requires ./plugins and ./cli barrels.

#!/usr/bin/env node

require('./plugins');
require('./cli');

Finally, run npm install -g from the project's root directory.

Devly Plugins and Utilities

All Devly plugins and utilities are published to npm under the @devly scope. For a full list, visit https://github.com/devlyjs.

Here is a partial list:

• @devly/devly-apache
• @devly/devly-cli
• @devly/devly-store
• @devly/devly-shell
• @devly/devly-wordpress