Local Dev Example with Helm, Rancher Desktop, and Tilt

Easy local development with Kubernetes, without Docker.

This example uses the MERN Stack Example application from MongoDB to show how to containerize and run an existing application in Tilt and Rancher Desktop.

Setup

Install Rancher Desktop.
Install Tilt.
Clone this repository to your machine.
Run git submodule init and git submodule update to clone the mern-stack-example code into the mern-stack-example directory.
Run tilt up. (Note that when you quit Tilt with ctrl-C, the k8s workloads continue to run in the background. Run tilt down to destroy them.)
Navigate to Tilt dashboard at http://localhost:10350/ to watch service startup.
Navigate to web interface at http://localhost:3000/.

Code Organization

Tiltfile: Tilt configuration for local dev
./pipeline: Pipeline configuration files to support the example application
- ./pipeline/build: Dockerfiles to build the MERN example applications
- ./pipeline/helm-charts: Helm charts for the MERN example applications
- ./pipeline/values: Helm value overrides files for the MongoDB Helm chart

Implementation Notes

This example includes 3 services:

mongodb: Loaded from Bitnami MongoDB Helm chart
client: A React web application
server: An Express API service

These service have been copied / adapted from https://github.com/mongodb-developer/mern-stack-example.

The mongodb service is installed from the Bitnami helm chart. The MERN example applications are from MongoDB's MERN Stack example application

Both client and server have live updates enabled. If any files in the source directory are changed, Tilt will copy them into the running container.

Accessing Services

Individual services are also exposed directly on different ports - see the Tilt dashboard for links to individual services.

http://localhost:3000/ - mapped to client
http://localhost:5000/ - mapped to server

Known issue: