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Installing Prerequisites

Audience: Application developers, Administrators

Overview

The production reference guide uses many different command line tools to allow you interact with the cluster from your local machine. Tools such as oc, git and jq help you to understand how a cloud native deployment works in a hands-on manner.

For Windows users please follow these instructions windows.md

In this topic, we're going to:

  • Learn how to install the prerequisite command line tools

Where appropriate, click on the macOS or Linux horizontal tab to see the corresponding operating system instructions.

Installing a package manager

A operating system specific package manager is used to install the prerequisite tools on the different platforms.

On macOS, we use the homebrew package manager to install the prerequisite tools

On the terminal command line, issue the following command to see if homebrew is installed:

brew --version

You should see the following output if homebrew is installed:

Homebrew 3.3.5
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 63e2388f12d; last commit 2021-11-24)
Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision b8049f243b; last commit 2021-11-24)

If it is not installed, use the Install Homebrew instructions.

For Linux we will use RHEL 8 and dnf as an example, RHEL 7 users should be able to replace dnf with yum.

Refer to the Red Hat Subscription Manager for instructions on setting up your RHEL subscriptions and repositories.

Installing git

The git command line tool is used extensively throughout the tutorial to interact with git and GitHub. We perform GitOps operations using commands such as git push to make a change to a cluster.

Install git using the following command:

brew install git

dnf install git

Learn more about git.

Use git --version to ensure you are using version 2 or higher.

Installing gh

The gh command line tool is the official command line to interact with GitHub. It is used some command scripts, for example to create a repository from a GitHub template.

Install gh using the following command:

brew install gh

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://cli.github.com/packages/rpm/gh-cli.repo
dnf install gh

Learn more about gh.

Use gh --version to ensure you are using version 2 or higher.

Installing jq

jq is a utility used to manipulate the JSON output typically returned by the oc command when reading or updating Kubernetes resources.

Install jq using the following command:

brew install jq

dnf install jq

Learn more about jq.

Installing node, npm & nvm

This trio of technologies is used to install various node.js based utilities used in the tutorial.

Note

nvm is optional.

node

Install node using the following command:

brew install node

dnf groupinstall 'Development Tools'
dnf module install nodejs/development

npm

npm is the package manager used to install different node.js packages.

Install npm using the following command:

brew install npm

npm gets installed as part of the 'Development Tools' in the node install step.

Learn more about npm.

nvm

nvm (node version manager) allows you to install and use different versions of node.js.

Reminder

Installing nvm is optional.

Install nvm using the following command:

brew install nvm

To install nvm on Linux see: nvm

Installing tree

tree is a command-line tool display a file system structure by displaying folders and files in tree-like structure.

Install tree using the following command:

brew install tree

dnf install tree

Learn more about tree.

Installing watch

watch is a utility used to periodically monitor the output of a command. It is useful in checking the status of long running processes such as deployments.

Install watch using the following command:

brew install watch

dnf install watch

Learn more about watch.

Installing oc

The oc command is used to interact with an OpenShift cluster. It is effectively a synonym for the kubectl command with some additional options.

Use these instructions to get the latest version of oc.

You can use oc version to confirm that you have:

  • Client Version: 4.6 or higher
  • Server Version: 4.7 or higher

The version of oc must be compatible with the version of the cluster you previously created.

Tip

Red Hat Linux users with an appropriate Red Hat subscription can also use dnf to install oc.

subscription-manager list --available --matches '*OpenShift*'
subscription-manager attach --pool=<pool id>
subscription-manager repos --enable="rhocp-4.8-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms"
dnf install openshift-clients
Where 'pool id' is the id of a pool that has the OpenShift clients entitlement.