Requirements

To develop modules, you need the following:

• docker
• docker-compose
• A copy of the f5-ansible source code that you cloned by using git clone
• A built copy of the development container
• The invoke python module installed (for doing maintenance work)

Docker and docker-compose

The installation of docker and docker-compose are beyond the scope of this document. However, here are links to assist you:

• https://docs.docker.com/install/#cloud
• https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

Note that you should install the CE version of Docker. Depending on your operating system, packages for one or both of these tools may already be available. You are advised to use them if they are.

Note

On macOS X, if you install the pre-compiled binaries for Mac from the Docker website, the docker-compose tool comes pre-installed with docker.

The development container

To acquire a copy of the development container, issue the following command after you install docker and docker-compose.

$ docker-compose -f devtools/docker-compose.yaml build

This step can take some time to finish because each of the containers needs to build.

After the containers are built, use the inv command with the container.run argument to enter one of the containers. For example:

$ inv container.run -p py2.7

The remaining steps can take place inside this container. Actual code writing does not need to happen inside the container, because docker-compose mounts your source directory to the container’s /here directory.