CloudBees CD/RO GitHub Actions Demonstration Repository

This repository illustrates the use of CloudBees CD/RO GitHub Actions in your GitHub Action Workflows to deploy and release applications. This repository includes is the code and Dockerfile needed to build a very simple deployable application. The repository also includes workflows to set up a CloudBees CD/RO instance and perform deployments and releases to the Kubernetes cluster where the CloudBees CD/RO instance is running.

What you need to run the demo workflows

A CloudBees CD/RO instance with the appropriate port (443) reachable by the GitHub runners so that it can accept REST API calls
An API token from the CloudBees CD/RO instance (see Manage access tokens via the UI documentation)
A read/write repo+packages GitHub API token (see Personal Access Tokens)
A Docker hub API token (Log into https://hub.docker.com/ and navigate to account settings > Security and generate a read/write token)

CloudBees CD/RO Instance Set up

Most of the CloudBees CD/RO instance setup is handled through the demonstration repository automation. It may be necessary to update a property value so that the deployed application can be easily accessed through a job link.

Open and login to the CloudBees CD/RO user interface from a web browser
From the left hand menu, navigate to Administration > Server Properties
Examine the value set for app_base_hostname
If this does not matches your CloudBees CD/RO hostname, edit the property to make it so. The edit command is available from the right hand menu.
Alternatively, you can set this property through the DSL IDE. Navigate to the DSL IDE from the left hand menu under DevOps Essentials, copy the text property "/server/app_base_hostname", value: "gha.cb-demos.io" to the editor, replacing gha.cb-demos.io with your instance's FQDN hostname, then press the green button to the right to apply the DSL code.

Demonstration instance set up

Navigate to the demonstration repository, https://github.com/cloudbees-demos/gh-actions-demo
Press the "Use this template" button to create a new repository in an organization you have write access to
Navigate to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions and add the following repository secrets:
- CDRO_URL, for example, https://my-cdro-server.example.com
- CDRO_TOKEN
- DOCKERHUB_USER
- DOCKERHUB_TOKEN
- GH_PAT
Navigate to the Actions tab
Run the "Setup and CD config" Action using the "Run workflow" dropdown button
Once that Action is completed, run the “Build and Deploy” to initialize the application in the demo-dev environment Steps 1-6 can be scripted. You'll need the GitHub command line tool, gl (See https://cli.github.com/). Edit the repository file GitHubSetup.sh with your values and run the script from a shell that has been authenticated to GitHub.

Working with the demonstration

At this point, CloudBees CD/RO should have deployed the application to the demo-dev environment (demo-dev namespace in the CloudBees CD/RO Kubernetes Instance). Navigate to the application run to see the results:

Using the left-hand navigation menu, select Deployment Automation > Applications
There, you should see the Application model "Demo App", select the link to view the model
Select the "Application process run" tab to view a listing of deployments, select the deployment link
Note in the upper right corner, there are two links
Demo App - This like will take you to the demo-dev-deployed application
GitHub Action Workflow URL - This will take you to the workflow run that kicked off this deployment
Using the left-hand navigation menu, select Deployment Automation > Environment Inventory to view details about what was deployed, namely the image demo and its version to the demo-dev environment.
Using the left-hand navigation menu, select Analytics > Dashboards > Application Deployments to view the deployment report If a change is made and pushed to the repository, the workflow will rebuild the application image, and a CloudBees CD/RO Release will be initiated to manage the staged release to demo-prod.
Edit the README.md file by adding a blank line, for example, and commit to main. This should start the “Build and Deploy” workflow again, but this time it will create a release model and start it with the new application image.
Using the left-hand navigation menu, select Release Orchestration > Releases
There you should see a Release model called "Simple Release ", select the link to view the model
Select the Pipeline runs tab to view the Release Pipeline run
Once the first stage has been completed, it is ready for approval to promote the application to demo-prod.
Refresh the application window to see the newly deployed version of the application
Go ahead to approve the manual task.
Select the Path to product to view the status of the release artifacts
Once the demo-prod deployment has been completed, examine the Environment Inventory once again
You can navigate to the demo-prod deployment through the Release Pipeline run Production stage deployment task; there, you can view the newly deployed application in demo-prod.

Security Considerations

Secrets added to the repository according to the instructions above will be pushed to and used by the CloudBees CD/RO instance to establish authenticated sessions with Docker Hub and GitHub. The secret values are managed as credentials in CloudBees CD/RO. Credentials are encrypted before they are stored in the system. However, users with sufficient access rights on the system can retrieve the credential values.
By default, SSL certificated are ignored to support self-signed certificate CloudBees CD/RO instances. If this is not desired, update the files cd-setup.yaml and build-and-deploy.yml, replacing "true" with false in all the ignore-unverified-cert fields.