Overview

OpenShift Container Platform is designed for building and deploying applications. Depending on how much you want to involve OpenShift Container Platform in your development process, you can choose to:

  • focus your development within an OpenShift Container Platform project, using it to build an application from scratch then continuously develop and manage its lifecycle, or

  • bring an application (e.g., binary, container image, source code) you have already developed in a separate environment and deploy it onto OpenShift Container Platform.

Using OpenShift Container Platform as Your Development Environment

Deploying then developing on OpenShift Container Platform

You can begin your application’s development from scratch using OpenShift Container Platform directly. Consider the following steps when planning this type of development process:

Initial Planning

  • What does your application do?

  • What programming language will it be developed in?

Access to OpenShift Container Platform

  • OpenShift Container Platform should be installed by this point, either by yourself or an administrator within your organization.

Develop

  • Using your editor or IDE of choice, create a basic skeleton of an application. It should be developed enough to tell OpenShift Container Platform what kind of application it is.

  • Push the code to your Git repository.

Generate

  • Create a basic application using the oc new-app command. OpenShift Container Platform generates build and deployment configurations.

Manage

  • Start developing your application code.

  • Ensure your application builds successfully.

  • Continue to locally develop and polish your code.

  • Push your code to a Git repository.

  • Is any extra configuration needed? Explore the Developer Guide for more options.

Verify

  • You can verify your application in a number of ways. You can push your changes to your application’s Git repository, and use OpenShift Container Platform to rebuild and redeploy your application. Alternatively, you can hot deploy using rsync to synchronize your code changes into a running pod.

Bringing an Application to Deploy on OpenShift Container Platform

Developing then deploying on OpenShift Container Platform

Another possible application development strategy is to develop locally, then use OpenShift Container Platform to deploy your fully developed application. Use the following process if you plan to have application code already, then want to build and deploy onto an OpenShift Container Platform installation when completed:

Initial Planning

  • What does your application do?

  • What programming language will it be developed in?

Develop

  • Develop your application code using your editor or IDE of choice.

  • Build and test your application code locally.

  • Push your code to a Git repository.

Access to OpenShift Container Platform

  • OpenShift Container Platform should be installed by this point, either by yourself or an administrator within your organization.

Generate

  • Create a basic application using the oc new-app command. OpenShift Container Platform generates build and deployment configurations.

Verify

  • Ensure that the application that you have built and deployed in the above Generate step is successfully running on OpenShift Container Platform.

Manage

  • Continue to develop your application code until you are happy with the results.

  • Rebuild your application in OpenShift Container Platform to accept any newly pushed code.

  • Is any extra configuration needed? Explore the Developer Guide for more options.