This presentation aims to demonstrate how to deploy a software release on a SlapOS Theia. The process can be used for any software available on the SlapOS repository. Note, that the SlapOS Theia is an extensible platform to develop multi-language Cloud & Desktop IDEs with state-of-the-art web technologies. Instantiating a SlapOS thus means, creating a smaller encapsulated system for then deploying another software inside. This is a useful approach for developing or hosting simple software releases.

We’ll show how to deploy a "helloworld" software release on a SlapOS Theia in this presentation. 

We will clarify the prerequisites in order to start the presentation. Then, we progress to show the steps to deploy "helloworld" software release on SlapOS Theia.

This deployment tutorial is based on Prepare For The Deployment of Software on Theia. You are expected to finish the last tutorial and have your software located on SlapOS Theia to get started.

From terminal, we can use slapos command line. To deploy a software, we should basically type these 4 commands. Don't be afraid of these strange commands. You will understand how it works practically through the 4 steps in a quarter.  

The information below may help you:

• Client commands(slapos supply, slapos request) talking to the master as a human and requesting installation/deployment of services
• Node commands(slapos node) talking to the master and doing the job of compiling the software and launching the services
• There is also an Understanding SlapOS Architecture you can refer to

In our case, the software is helloworld, located in /srv/slapgrid/slappart49/srv/project/slapos/software/helloworld/software.cfg, for example. The path can be copied by right-clicking the exact file (software.cfg) -> Copy Path. And Node is named slaprunner here. You could either type slapos supply $PWD/slapos/software/helloworld/software.cfg slaprunner in your terminal, or replace $PWD/slapos/software/helloworld/software.cfg with the full path of the software.cfg of helloworld (something like slapos supply /srv/slapgrid/slappartX/srv/project/slapos/software/helloworld/software.cfg slaprunner).

When you are inside theia, you are actually talking to a slapproxy (small slapos master) dedicated to your Theia. 

You can run slapos node software in Terminal to compile the software. Or there is a task configured with the same label (Terminal -> Run Task, if there is an error, hit Run task again).

Note: slapos node software will compile the software locally in the node. The compilation directory will be used later to instantiate your service . Your instance will be deployed totally from the software installation directory (no more access to internet).

Task starts the build in a new terminal. If you close that terminal process will be terminated.

Compilation can take anywhere from a few minutes (simple software, already compiled) to several hours. The log will inform of any errors or warnings encountered during compilation.

Sometimes external errors such as network errors happen and in that case we can retry the compilation.

By re-running the task, you can have your software compiled successfully. Now we can say, we have prepared everything from the software configuration file, and it can be used for instantiating an instance without network. Before having the instance with helloworld software, we are supposed to request an instance firstly. 

In order to deploy a service, you use slapos request to ask the master to allocate an instance for you. Since the slapproxy (small master in Theia) only knows a local node, you are sure the master will allocate the software to your local node. “instance_name” is up to you, and [software] must be exactly the same path you supplied earlier.

request is the command to:

• create the service if it’s not yet created
• get parameters from a service

You will need this information for your next tutorial.

Now we come to the last step of deployment. After have an instance requested, you can run slapos node instance in Terminal to instantiate your software. This is the command actually deploying the service in the node. Or there is a task configured with the same label (Terminal -> Run Task, if there is a connection error, hit Run task again)