Installing Codewind for Eclipse Che

Codewind is supported on Eclipse Che, removing the need to install an IDE on your local machine to develop your microservices.

By using Codewind hosted as an application on the cloud, you can develop, build and run your code all by accessing Codewind from a browser window from your local desktop.

Follow the instructions to get started with using Codewind as an application hosted on the cloud, which guides you through:

  1. Installing Eclipse Che to use with Codewind or installing Codewind onto an existing Eclipse Che cluster
  2. Adding an image registry in Eclipse Che (optional)
  3. Creating a Codewind workspace in Eclipse Che
  4. Creating your first Codewind project with Codewind for Eclipse Che
  5. Making a code change to try out the inner loop experience

Other Codewind configurations

Codewind can be used in one of three ways - hosted as an IDE extension on the cloud, locally or remotely.

A quick way to try out Codewind before installing Codewind on Eclipse Che is to use Codewind locally In this fully local configuration, you create, develop, build and run your containerized applications on your local machine using your local IDE. See Getting Started with Codewind for local IDE options and step-by-step instructions.

Using Codewind Remotely Rather than using an IDE hosted in the cloud to make code changes, Codewind can also be configured for making code changes on your local IDE before building and running on your cloud. To configure Codewind to be used remotely, you must first follow the steps to install codewind locally.

Installing Codewind for Eclipse Che

Prerequisites

  1. Set up PersistentVolumes (PVs) that support both ReadWriteOnce (RWO) and ReadWriteMany (RWX) access modes and each have a minimum of five Gi storage.
    • One volume is required for Che, and two volumes are required for each Codewind workspace.
    • For Network File System (NFS) shares, set 777 permissions for the exported folders and ownership of nobody:nogroup.
    • Because Codewind uses ReadWriteMany (RWX) volumes to provide persistent storage, use NFS for storage on OpenShift 4.
  2. Ensure that the cluster can pull images from the docker.io/eclipse and quay.io/eclipse registries.
    • Both Eclipse Che and Eclipse Codewind host Docker images at these locations.
    • Many clusters have image policies that control which registries you can use to pull images. Check your cluster documentation and ensure that the cluster image pull policies permit both of these registries.
  3. Create the che namespace to install Che with the kubectl create namespace che command.
  4. Set up the ClusterRole for Codewind: kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse/codewind-che-plugin/0.14.1/setup/install_che/codewind-clusterrole.yaml

Choose from the following instructions:

or

Installing Eclipse Che to use with Codewind

Follow these instructions to install Eclipse Che with HTTPS so that Codewind functions properly.

The fastest way to install Eclipse Che for Codewind is to use the chectl CLI. Perform the following:

  1. Install the chectl CLI tool. See Using the chectl management tool.

  2. Download the codewind-checluster.yaml file.

  3. Use the following instructions to install Codewind on your Openshift or Kubernetes cluster:

Installing on OpenShift:

Eclipse Che on OpenShift makes use of the Openshift router’s existing certificates. Run the following chectl command to install the latest compatible version of Che on OpenShift:

   $ chectl server:start --platform=openshift --installer=operator --che-operator-cr-yaml=codewind-checluster.yaml --che-operator-image=quay.io/eclipse/che-operator:7.16.1

Installing on Kubernetes:

Set up Eclipse Che with TLS certificates.

  1. Set the spec.server.ingressDomain field in the Che .yaml file to the Ingress domain. If you’re unsure of your Ingress domain, ask your cluster administrator.
    • Note: You can modify this file, but leave the spec.server.cheWorkspaceClusterRole field set to eclipse-codewind and the spec.storage.preCreateSubPaths field set to true.
    • If you install Che with publicly signed certificates, such as on OpenShift on IBM Cloud, set the spec.server.selfSignedCert to false.

  2. Generate TLS certificates and keys. For more information, see Generating self-signed TLS certificates.To use self-signed certificates for your cluster setup, see Installing Che in TLS mode with self-signed certificates Important: do not use self-signed certificates in production

  3. Generate a Kubernetes secret containing the TLS secret and key you generated in the previous set: 
    $ kubectl create secret tls che-tls --key=domain.key --cert=domain.crt -n che
  4. Generate a Kubernetes secret containing the certificate you generated in step 2: 
    $ cp rootCA.crt ca.crt
$ kubectl create secret generic self-signed-certificate --from-file=ca.crt -n che
  5. In the codewind-checluster.yaml file, set tlsSecretName: 'che-tls'
  6. Run the following command to install Che: 
    $ chectl server:start --platform=k8s --installer=operator --domain=<ingress-domain> --che-operator-cr-yaml=codewind-checluster.yaml --che-operator-image=quay.io/eclipse/che-operator:7.16.1

Installing Codewind onto an existing Eclipse Che cluster

If you already have an Eclipse Che installation with TLS, you can update it for Codewind.

Run the following command, where $NAMESPACE is the namespace that your Che workspaces run in. By default, this namespace is che.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse/codewind-che-plugin/0.14.1/setup/install_che/codewind-clusterrole.yaml -n $NAMESPACE

Next steps

Getting started with Codewind for Eclipse Che - next steps Continue to instructions for adding an image registry in Codewind.