This all is 100% open source, so if you would like to contribute, feel free to edit this page.

Enable and add software templates

In order to enable software templates (for GitHub), the only first thing you’ll need to do, is configuring a GitHub application that has the permission to create Git repositories (see How to configure GitHub applications).

In order to enable component scanning from GitHub to Developer Hub (i.e., catalog entity type Component), you’ll need to execute the following steps:

1. Enable the Catalog Backend Module GitHub plugin by applying the following yaml to the dynamic plugins configuration (on anchor_01):

       - package: ./dynamic-plugins/dist/backstage-plugin-catalog-backend-module-github-dynamic
         # documentation: https://backstage.io/docs/integrations/github/discovery/
         disabled: false
         pluginConfig: {}
   

2. Add a provider, which scans your GitHub repositories every x time and creates or updates Component definitions in Developer Hub by applying the following yaml to the Developer Hub Config on anchor_02:

    catalog:
      providers:
        github:
          # the provider ID can be any camelCase string
          providerId:
            organization: 'maarten-vandeperre' # string
            catalogPath: '/catalog-info.yaml' # string
            filters:
              branch: 'master' # string
              repository: '.*' # Regex
            schedule: # optional; same options as in TaskScheduleDefinition
              # supports cron, ISO duration, "human duration" as used in code
              frequency: { minutes: 1 }
              # supports ISO duration, "human duration" as used in code
              timeout: { minutes: 1 }
              initialDelay: { seconds: 15 }
   

   Most important configurations:

   • catalogPath: the catalog entity Component type definition, which describes the given component.
   • filters > branch: branch to look at.
   • repository: I will scan all my repositories, so I add a regular expression, covering everything.

   If you want to see it in a complete configuration file, feel free to have a look at gitops/developer-hub/11_app-config-rhdh.yaml, which contains all the integrations, described in this README file.

3. Add a GitHub integration configuration by applying the following yaml to the Developer Hub Config on anchor_02:

    integrations:
      github:
        - host: github.com
          token: ${RHDH_GITHUB_INTEGRATION_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN}
          apps:
            - appId: ${RHDH_GITHUB_INTEGRATION_APP_ID}
              clientId: ${RHDH_GITHUB_INTEGRATION_APP_CLIENT_ID}
              clientSecret: ${RHDH_GITHUB_INTEGRATION_APP_CLIENT_SECRET}
              webhookUrl: none
              webhookSecret: none
              privateKey: ${RHDH_GITHUB_INTEGRATION_APP_PRIVATE_KEY}
   

   Note: The token is optional, but if you don’t configure it, you’ll run rather fast against GitHub API rate limits. So I would advise to have some kind of system user account in place to link to the catalog scanning configuration.

   If you want to see it in a complete configuration file, feel free to have a look at gitops/developer-hub/11_app-config-rhdh.yaml, which contains all the integrations, described in this README file.

4. Now you should be able to see the repositories in your GitHub account that have a Component definition (i.e., catalog-info.yaml file) in their root. If for some reason it is not popping up, try as well the console log for debugging ends or check the database.