Local environments

Architects open-source CLI was designed specifically to allow developers to write architect.yml files and provision the corresponding services on their own machine. Once you’ve created an architect.yml file, you can use the CLI to register the component locally and then deploy with ease.

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Local registration

One of the staple features of Architect, dependency management, requires that components maintain a unique name by which they can be resolved. By default, the CLI will look for components by name in Architects cloud registry, but when developers are working locally they are unlikely to have published their work to the registry.

In order to help developers take advantage of dependency management during active development, Architects CLI includes the means of simulating Architects cloud registry right on your personal machine. We’ve taken inspiration from NPM to instrument a link command that will register a path on your local machine as the location for a component. Whenever the component is referenced by name, the CLI will then find it on your machine instead of having to call out to the registry.

$ architect link ./examples/react-app/
Successfully linked react-app to local system at /architect-cli/examples/react-app.

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Local deployment

Once you’ve registered a component locally or remotely, that component can then be deployed with a single command:

$ architect dev react-app -s world_text="dude"

Using locally linked react-app found at /architect-cli/examples/react-app
https://app.localhost.architect.sh:443/ => react-app--app

https://localhost:443/ => gateway:443
https://localhost:8080/ => gateway:8080
https://localhost:50000/ => react-app--api-db:5432
https://localhost:50001/ => react-app--api:8080
https://localhost:50002/ => react-app--app:8080

When running this command we are telling Architect to deploy the application to the local machine. Each component will run for the duration of the command. Whenever this commnad is used, the debug fields associated with each service will serve as override values for the service configuration.

The next portion of the command to call attention to is the reference to the component and tag, react-app:latest. This refers to a component name and tag, and the CLI will first attempt to find it in the local registry before then trying to find it in the cloud registry. If the component is found locally, the CLI will inform you via the first line of the logs.

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Managing local deployments

List all running dev instances.

$ architect dev:list

Stop a running dev instance.

$ architect dev:stop <env>

Rebuild the image and restart a running service.

$ architect dev:restart

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Debugging local deployments

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Logs

You can view the logs for an individual service:

$ architect logs
? Select an account (Use arrow keys or type to search)
❯ dev (Local Machine)

# Optional flags
$ architect logs --follow
$ architect logs --tail
$ architect logs --since 5m
$ architect logs --timestamps
$ architect logs --raw

If you want to target a specific local environment and service:

# Use architect dev:list to see available local environments
$ architect logs --environment <env> <component>.services.<service-name>

# Example
$ architect logs --environment architect hello-world.services.api

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Exec

You can run commands inside of the running containers:

$ architect exec -- ls
? Select an account (Use arrow keys or type to search)
❯ dev (Local Machine)

If you want to target a specific local environment and service:

# Use architect dev:list to see available local environments
$ architect exec --environment <env> <component>.services.<service-name> -- <cmd>

# Example
$ architect exec --environment architect hello-world.services.api -- ls

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Running without debug

To learn more about testing how your services will run remotely see local configuration.

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Exposing services on localhost

To learn about how to expose your services see ingress rules.

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SSL

Local deployments created with the architect dev command will have SSL enabled by default. This is to ensure that local deployments used for testing and development mirror production deployments as closely as possible. If you’d like to disable this feature and run local deployments without SSL, add the --ssl=false flag when starting your deployment with the architect dev command.

While this feature does enable SSL to work locally, it in no way, shape or form is considered to be a security measurement.

Since this feature uses a live domain that points back to your local machine, please be aware that this does not enable you to share your local development environment with others. The wildcard domain *.localhost.architect.sh points to 127.0.0.1. If you find yourself in a situation without an active internet connection you can work offline without SSL using the —ssl=false flag as mentioned above.

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Setting secret values

Finally, the -p flag in the dev command allows you to specify values for secrets defined by the component.

Additionally, environment variables found on the local machine prefixed with ARC_ will be used to populate the secret values of any components being deployed. For example, if we wanted to set the world_text secret via environment parmeters, all we have to do is define a secret named ARC_world_text:

$ export ARC_world_text="dude"
$ architect dev react-app

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HSTS issues

Architect starts a load balancer for each local deployment to route traffic to your services over HTTP. Occasionally browsers such as Chrome will block requests to certain websites unless traffic is sent over HTTPS. If you attempt to navigate to a route exposed by your local deployment and see a message such as You cannot visit app.localhost.architect.sh right now because the website uses HSTS, you will need to turn off HSTS for localhost on your browser. In Chrome, for example, that can be done by navigating to chrome://net-internals/#hsts and deleting the security policy for localhost and its subdomains.