Setting up a local development environment

Benefits of running a BMC Helix Innovation Studio Developer Sandbox on a local system

Setting up a BMC Helix Innovation Studio Developer Sandbox on your local system provides the following benefits:

• Capability to test and debug
• Capability to build and leverage Web APIs and external record definitions
• Support for incoming REST API calls
• Ability to send and receive emails
• Share folders between the laptop and the Docker instance to have the logs available locally

Limitations of accessing Developer Sandbox from BMC Developer Portal

The Developer Sandbox instances provided by BMC are currently running on AWS instances. The Developer Sandbox has the following limitations for security purposes:

• No outbound connections are allowed, and you cannot perform the following actions:
  • Leverage Web APIs and external record definitions
  • Create custom Java REST API, HTTP, or web services call from the Java code
  • Send and receive emails
• Most of the inbound connections are blocked. Developers cannot connect with the Java IDE to the developer instance and debug the Java code.
• The debug port is closed, preventing the developers from testing and debugging their custom Java code. 
• No support for deploying bundles that are not built by the developer in the Developer Sandboxes, preventing developers from building custom extensions for other applications, such as the applications developed by BMC. 
• Blocked connection to the Docker instance preventing the developer from freely accessing the logs.
• No ability to code locally and deploy the custom code in the cloud. 

System requirements

The following table lists the operating system and installers you need to set up the local development environment:

To install and configure Docker for Microsoft Windows

1. Download and install Docker version 20.10 or later for Microsoft Windows.

2. In the system tray, right-click the Docker icon.
3. To configure the Docker settings, perform the following steps: 
   For more information, see Get started with Docker for Windows in the Docker documentation.

   1. Select Settings > Resources > Advanced and make sure that a minimum of 2 CPUs are selected and a minimum of 16 GB memory is allocated.

      Best practice

      To configure the Docker image, we recommend that you allocate 16 GB of memory.

   2. Select Settings > General, and select Use the WSL 2 based engine.
   3. Select Settings > Resources > File Sharing and configure the drive where you have installed the scripts; for example, the C or the D drive.

To install Git Bash

1. Access the Git Download URL and select Windows.

2. Cancel the download for the default Git installer and from the UI, select the 64-bit Git for Windows Portable option.
3. After you run the executable file, the Git command-line program is installed in the C:\git\PortableGit folder.

Git Bash is saved as git-bash.exe inside the PortableGit folder.

To download and install scripts

          1. Log in to Developer Community  and click Request Sandbox. 

           2. On the Request Local Sandbox Access page, click Request a Local Developer Sandbox.

3. To join the private BMC Helix Innovation community group, click on Ask to join.

          4. After your access is approved, download the sandbox files by following the instructions under Group Details.     

5. Extract the sandbox-scripts.zip file into a sandbox folder. Move the image.tar.gz files into the same folder.
    For example, you can extract the file to C:\Sandbox or C:\Users\<userid>\Sandbox folder. 

    The following table displays the structure of the sandbox folder after running the setup_sandbox.sh script:

To create a development environment

Port 5432 must be open for the PostgreSQL container in the sandbox. If the 5432 port is in use, change the port in the sandbox.yml file. The sandbox.yml file is located in the folder where the setup-sandbox.sh script exists. 

Also, make sure that ports 8080 and 8008 are open for the server HTTP ports.

Run the setup-sandbox.sh script in Git bash:

The script performs the initial sanity checks, such as checking whether the Docker is running and whether sufficient resources are allocated and configured.

After performing the initial checks, the script performs the following tasks:

• 
  

  • Creates the following subfolders:

    Subfolder	Files added to the folder
    logs/	Sandbox setup logs
    logs/ars	AR System server logs
    logs/midtier	Mid Tier logs
    postgres/data	Database storage files Important: The size of database storage can grow over 4GB. Make sure that you have sufficient storage available.
    docker-images/	The downloaded Docker images are moved to this folder.

  • Cleans the database and creates log folders if the script was already executed
  • Loads the Docker images
  • Starts the PostgreSQL database as a container by using the current official PostgreSQL Docker image
  • Restores a base database by using the Docker image: innovation-suite-db-xx.xx.tar
  • Launches the server by using the Docker images: arserver:xxxxxx and midtier:xxxxxx

After the installation is complete, a link to BMC Helix Innovation Studio along with the credentials is displayed for the administrator. 

To start or stop BMC Helix Innovation Studio

To start the server, run the  start-sandbox.sh script in Git bash:

To stop the server, run the  stop-sandbox.sh script in Git bash: