Brilliant Continuous Deployment

Overview

Strider is an Open Source Continuous Deployment / Continuous Integration platform. It is written in Node.JS / JavaScript and uses MongoDB as a backing store. It is published under the BSD license.

Strider is extremely customizable through plugins. Plugins can

add hooks to perform arbitrary actions during build.
modify the database schema to add custom fields.
register their own HTTP routes.
subscribe to and emit socket events.
create or modify user interfaces within Strider.
so much more! just use your imagination!

For more details check out the introductory chapter of the Strider Book

General Requirements

nodejs, v0.8 or v0.10
mongodb (local or remote)
git >= 1.7.10

Running on Infrastructure

Make sure you have MongoDB installed on your system. You can get the latest version at mongodb.org.

Next you will need Node.JS. You can get binary packages for most platforms at nodejs.org.

Once you have Node.JS on your system, you can fetch & install all the dependencies for your Strider clone by executing the following command in the project root:

npm install

Configuring

Strider configuration comes from environment variables. Most of the default values should work fine for running on localhost, however for an Internet-accessible deployment the following variables will need to be exported:

PORT : Port that strider runs on, optional (defaults to 3000).
DB_URI : MongoDB DB URI if not localhost (you can safely use MongoLab free plan - works great)
SERVER_NAME : Address at which server will be accessible on the Internet. E.g. https://strider.example.com (note: no trailing slash)
PLUGIN_GITHUB_APP_ID, PLUGIN_GITHUB_APP_SECRET: Github app ID & secret (assuming not running on localhost:3000) - you can register a new one at https://github.com/settings/applications/new - the Main URL should be the same as server name above, and the callback URL should be server name with the path /auth/github/callback. E.g. https://strider.example.com/auth/github/callback
PLUGIN_BITBUCKET_APP_KEY, PLUGIN_BITBUCKET_APP_SECRET, PLUGIN_BITBBUCKET_HOSTNAME: BitBucket app key, secret & server hostname. Needed if you're using BitBucket provider. More info at https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider-bitbucket.
If you want email notifications, configure an SMTP server (we recommend Mailgun for SMTP if you need a server - free account gives 200 emails / day):
- SMTP_HOST: SMTP server hostname e.g. smtp.example.com
- SMTP_PORT: SMTP server port e.g. 587 (default)
- SMTP_USER: SMTP auth username e.g. "myuser"
- SMTP_PASS: SMTP auth password e.g. "supersecret"
- SMTP_FROM: Default FROM address e.g. "Strider noreply@stridercd.com" (default)

Adding Initial Admin User

Strider isn't much use without an account to login with. Once you create an administrative user, you can invite as many other people as you like to your instance. There is a simple CLI subcommand to help you create the initial user:

node bin/strider addUser

Example run:

$ node bin/strider addUser
Enter email []: strider@example.com
Is admin? (y/n) [n]: y
Enter password []: *******

Email:    strider@example.com
Password: ****
isAdmin:  true
OK? (y/n) [y]:
22 Oct 21:21:01 - info: Connecting to MongoDB URL: mongodb://localhost/strider-foss
22 Oct 21:21:01 - info: User added successfully! Enjoy.

See the strider-cli for more details.

Starting Strider

Once Strider has been installed and configured, it can be started with:

npm start

Managing Plugins

Strider plugins are simply node modules, however managing them with npm can prove problematic. To combat this, the strider binary helps you manage plugins. You can use it to:

list local plugins
list remote plugins
install plugins
remove plugins
create new plugins

Listing Available Plugins

To list all plugins run bin/strider list --all

The data is fetched from the official Strider ecosystem index with version numbers cross-referenced against your locally installed plugins.

Installing Plugins

If you found a plugin that you'd like to install, let's say it's called strider-sweet-plugin you can do so easily

Just run bin/strider install strider-sweet-plugin

First we check to see if you've got it installed already. If not, we look it up in the ecosystem index to find out which github repository and tag to clone. Finally we npm install and restart strider if it's running.

Please note that the restart technique will only work if you're using bin/strider to run strider. Otherwise you'll need to manually restart strider.

Creating New Plugins

To get started, run bin/strider init

plugin: name:  strider-sweet-plugin
plugin: description:  Candy and stuff!
plugin: author:
Cloning into '/Users/keyvan/Projects/Strider-CD/strider/node_modules/strider-sweet-plugin'...
remote: Counting objects: 20, done.
remote: Total 20 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (20/20), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

A strider plugin template has been prepared for you in the following directory
        /Users/keyvan/Projects/Strider-CD/strider/node_modules/strider-sweet-plugin
Please view the README and begin editing the package.json.
Make sure to change the git remote to wherever you're hosting your plugin source code
When you're ready to publish, submit a pull request to https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider-plugins
If you have any questions or need help, you can find us in irc.freenode.net #strider

For more information on the internals check out the new plugin that was generated. Many features of Strider plugins are shown and well-commented. For more details about extending Strider check out existing plugins or strider-extension-loader

Strider on Heroku

To get up and running quickly on Heroku, you can simply use the button above. If you run into any issues, you can deploy manually with the steps below.

heroku create
heroku addons:add mongolab
git push heroku master
heroku open

If you want support for languages other than Node.js and Python, you'll need to set the buildpack for your app. Currently this enables support for Ruby 2.0.0.

heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/ddollar/heroku-buildpack-multi.git

Docker Quickstart

docker pull niallo/strider

For a fully self-contained and pre-built strider installation, check out the Strider Trusted Build.

There's a walkthrough of setting it up on our blog.

Modular Docker Image

Please see docker-strider

Require()'ing Strider

Strider can be require()-ed like any other NPM module. This is particularly useful when you want to

Make Strider a dependency at a specific version
Choose exactly which plugins to install
Customize configuration
Do other crazy stuff

For example, you could have a project with its own package.json that depends on strider at a specific version, along with any other extensions you choose loaded from a particular filesystem location. Then you could write a simple initialization shim like the following:

var strider = require('strider')

var instance = strider("/path/to/extensions/dir", config, function(err, initialized, appInstance) {
    console.log("Strider is now running")
})

Resources

Strider on DigitalOcean - Covers setting up an Ubuntu machine with Strider using upstart.
Strider plugin template - Simple setup for getting started with your own plugin.
Panamax Strider template - Strider template for use with Panamax.

Support & Help

We are very responsive to Github Issues - please think of them as a message board for the project!

IRC Channel

You can find us on irc.freenode.net in #strider

If nobody is responding, don't leave immediately. Someone will eventually respond. If you don't want to wait please create a Github issue! Many Strider contributors don't use IRC at all, but will respond pretty quickly to new Github Issues.

Commercial Support

Strider is maintained and supported by FrozenRidge, LLC. For commercial support, customization, integration & hosting enquiries please email hi@frozenridge.co.

ca136 / strider