Docker is one of the containerizers that makes the rest of this stack possible. There are other containerizers, but Docker has the most community support and is very accessible. The “More Resources” button will lead you to the download page for various operating systems.
Kubectl is the command line interface (cli) used to interact with Kubernetes Clusters. Follow the “More Resources” button to access the installation page of Kubectl. There are many ways to install, including package managers like homebrew and snap. Be sure to look into the autocompletion setup for bash and zsh at the bottom of the page as well, it makes life MUCH easier.
In order to do local testing and have a single-node Kubernetes Cluster on hand, we’ll download and install Minikube. Minikube is a project directly from Kubernetes specifically designed for a testing environment, so it has a large amount of community support. Go to the “More Resources” button below and it will take you to the Minikube github page with instructions on how to install. You will also need a VM driver such as VirtualBox that Minikube can use to start a VM for the Cluster.
Helm is a package manager and templating system for Kubernetes. We use Helm in SLATE to maintain a repository of SLATE apps, and to limit what settings we need to expose to the end user to deploy an app. The value of Helm comes from a file called “values.yaml”. This file exposes only the settings that a user needs to interact with to customzie a deployment, removing a lot of boilerplate work, and is used as the source for templating. Follow the “More Resources” link to download and install Helm.
Finally, we will need access to the SLATE client. To use SLATE, create an account on the SLATE portal and ask your SLATE-affiliated organization to add you to their approved users list. Once you’ve been added, there will be instructions for how to download the client, and save your user token.