Testing an Application Locally

This page gives hints about how to test a Roboconf application locally.
As usual, several strategies exist, and it also depends on the scope of the testing word.

Simulating Deployments

This scenario relies on the in-memory target handler.

# Configuration file for in-memory
handler = in-memory
name = Simulation

You can then manage the life cycle of the Roboconf instances.
Deploy them, start them, verify dependency management works, etc.

With this mode, the application recipes are not executed.
It is an interesting solution to discover the way Roboconf works and validate the structure of your Roboconf application.

Deploying with a Real Agent

This scenario relies on the embedded target handler.
It consists in deploying a real Roboconf agent (e.g. the Karaf distribution), configuring it by hand and starting it. With the embedded handler, Roboconf assumes the agent is launched by hand. Unlike with other targets, it does not create it.

Although this approach works, it is not recommended to use it.

First, it requires quite a lot of steps. Second, it is limited to a single agent. And most of all, there might be port conflicts with the DM. You can avoid them by updating the configuration files. You can even deploy the roboconf-agent bundle in the same Karaf distribution than the DM. But again, it is a little bit complicated to set up.

Deploying for Real with in-memory Agents

This scenario is a mix of the two previous ones.
It relies on the in-memory target handler. It works in fact the same way than simulated deployments, except we ask the in-memory agents to execute the real recipes.

Notice you will need to install agent plug-ins in the DM so that recipes are correctly executed.

# Install the in-memory handler
roboconf:target in-memory

# Install the agent plug-ins you need. Example below.
bundle:install mvn:net/roboconf/roboconf-plugin-script/0.9

Be careful, since all the in-memory agents are located on the same machine, all the installed software will be deployed on it too.

# Configuration file for in-memory
handler = in-memory
name = Simulation
in-memory.execute-real-recipes = true

You can then manage the life cycle of the Roboconf instances.
Deploy them, start them, verify dependency management works, etc. You can also follow deployments steps by steps, watch Roboconf logs output, etc.

This solution is well-adapted to deployments whose recipes deal with Docker containers.
All the installed software are isolated in containers and do not corrupt your host system.

When dealing with Docker containers, you may consider to force the IP address of the agent in the in-memory configuration.

Example:

# Configuration file for in-memory
handler = in-memory
name = Simulation
in-memory.execute-real-recipes = true
in-memory.ip-address-of-the-agent = your.ip.address

Generally, Docker sets up a local network interface which is a kind of localhost alias, but restricted to the same sub-net than Docker containers. Generally, this interface is associated with the 172.17.0.1 IP address (172.17.42.1 in former Docker versions). So, if you only deploy Docker containers, you can force the IP address to 172.17.42.1. See this page for more details about Docker network configuration.

Notice: when executing real recipes with in-memory agents, recipes are executed sequentially.
Usually, agents are located on different machines and thus run concurrently. When in memory, there a super agent that manages them all to orchestrate the recipes executions.