Forem: Debabrata Panigrahi

How to use Self-Service Onboarding in Harness Internal Developer Portal

Debabrata Panigrahi — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 16:57:36 +0000

In this tutorial, Debabrata a Developer Relations Engineer at Harness, dives into the essentials of creating a basic service onboarding pipeline within the Harness Internal Developer Portal (IDP), that runs on Backstage v1.17. This feature is a game-changer for platform engineers and developers looking to streamline their application development processes.

What You'll Learn:

🛠️ Setting Up the Pipeline: We start by guiding you through the process of creating a Harness pipeline for service onboarding, including the creation of Build or Custom stages.
📝 Using Software Templates: Learn how to interact with software templates to collect user requirements efficiently.
🔄 Automating Service Onboarding: Discover how the Harness pipeline automates the onboarding of new services, from fetching skeleton code to creating new repositories.
🐍 Scripting with Cookiecutter: We'll show you how to use a Python CLI, cookiecutter, to generate a basic Next.js app and set up a repository.
🌐 Managing Variables and Authentication: Understand how to manage pipeline variables and authenticate requests within the pipeline.
🎨 Creating a Software Template Definition: We guide you through creating a template.yaml file in IDP, powered by Backstage Software Template.

Road to BackstageCon 2023: A Sneak Peek into an Exciting Lineup & A Recap of 2022!

Debabrata Panigrahi — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 18:30:00 +0000

BackstageCon 2023 is right around the corner! Hosted as a CNCF Co-located Event in Chicago, this year's BackstageCon promises a plethora of insightful sessions, keynotes, and lightning talks. It will be taking place on November 6 at McCormick Place West in Chicago, Illinois.

Our very own Himanshu Mishra, Product Manager for Harness IDP module will be speaking about Backstage core and focus on 16 powerful features that makes Backstage suitable for the self-service Internal Developer Portals in his talk What Does Backstage Really Offer – Looking Beyond Catalog and Templates and Into the Core Platform. The talk will emphasize Backstage's superiority over homegrown portals, highlighting its flexibility and control, making it an optimal choice for businesses. Himanshu was previously part of the Backstage core team at Spotify. Previous talks like Backstage: Shaping the Future Of Developer Experience and The Evolution of Backstage Backends from 2022 could be a good prelude to this talk.

Here is a sneak peek on some other exciting talks to look out for -

Roadie’s David Tuite's talk on "How to Adopt Backstage" continues 2022's themes focusing on developer happiness, emphasizing the real-world benefits of Backstage. Ryan Emerle from Comcast will discuss how their DevHub, powered by Backstage, addresses challenges and promotes extensions. Meanwhile, Wolfgang Gottesheim and Andi Grabner from Dynatrace will share their journey of enhancing developer efficiency for over 1000 engineers using Backstage, highlighting the rollout challenges and success measurements, which are on the same line of the last year's talk on DAZN’s journey of using backstage.

GenAI in Backstage: Ben Wilcock from VMware will spotlight the integration of AI models like ChatGPT in Backstage, showcasing how AI can elevate developer productivity by automating tasks and generating code. In a related lightning talk, Nate Axcell from TELUS will share their transformative journey with Backstage. From a collaboration tool for 2,500 employees to an internal search for 100,000 in just a year, TELUS harnessed AI capabilities, resulting in a 566% surge in Backstage adoption in Q2. This rapid adoption translated to significant productivity gains, saving each employee over 284 days of effort in two months.

At the upcoming event, there will be a deep dive into Backstage adoption stories. A panel, featuring experts from Spotify, U.S. Bank, Expedia Group, Twilio Segment, and Lunar, will discuss their Backstage journey, touching on technical and cultural shifts. Additionally, folks from B3, a top global stock exchange, will share their unique experience. They've been able to use** Backstage to boost developer satisfaction in a regulated environment**. Join us to learn from these real-world implementations and insights.

Keynotes: A series of sponsored keynotes featuring industry stalwarts like Chris Westerhold from Thoughtworks, Balaji Sivasubramanian from Red Hat, Meg Watson from Spotify, and Scott Sisil from VMware.

Lightning Talks: Quick, insightful sessions on a range of topics, ensuring there's something for everyone.

And that's just a sneak peek! The full schedule has even more exciting content, discussions, and networking opportunities. This being the second edition of Backstagecon

But that's not all! With Harness being a proud sponsor, we're excited to connect with fellow Backstage enthusiasts and share our expertise and insights with the community. If you're keen to explore how the Harness Internal Developer Portal (IDP) can enhance your developer experience and help you with your Software Delivery Life Cycle, check it out here.

See you in Chicago! 🚀🎉

Got Monorepos Instead of Microservices? This is How Harness IDP Has Got You Covered

Debabrata Panigrahi — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 16:24:48 +0000

Software development is ever-changing, and so are the tools and methodologies developers use. While microservices are the recent buzz and discussions on mono vs polyrepos are ongoing, monorepos have been a staple for a long time. These monolithic repositories, which house code for multiple projects in a single location, have their merits. They simplify dependency management, make code reviews efficient, and offer a unified versioning system.

However, the rise of Cloud Native tools and technologies has shifted the focus towards microservices, influencing tools like Backstage. Backstage, an open-source developer portal, has become a favorite for many organizations, especially those leaning towards microservices. But what about those still using or transitioning from monorepos?

Monorepos, while beneficial in many ways, come with their set of problems for backstage/Internal Developer Portal use case:

Plugins: Tools like Backstage have plugins, such as GitHub insights, that are designed with the assumption that a single repo corresponds to a single software component. In a mono-repo setup, this can lead to inaccurate results, as multiple components might reside in the same repository.

Here's where the Harness Internal Developer Portal comes in. While it's true that our primary design has been microservice-first, and mono-repos might seem like an afterthought, the IDP is equipped to handle both. The Harness Developer Portal is versatile enough to cater to both microservices and mono-repos, ensuring no organization is left behind in their development journey.

How IDP takes special care of monorepos

This Harness Internal Developer Portal aims to enable organizations to handle mono-repos as efficiently as microservices, especially given the challenges they present. Here's How:

Location Flexibility with catalog-info.yaml: One of the standout features of the Harness Internal Developer Portal is its ability to recognize the catalog-info.yaml file, irrespective of its location in the repository.In a mono-repo, the YAML definition can be placed anywhere, offering immense flexibility in structuring. Fun fact - we love mono-repos here at Harness and our harness-core is managed using a mono-repo.
Localized Documentation: With mono-repos, documentation can reside within specific sub-directories, ensuring that related code and its documentation are closely knit. Backstage even offers a plugin to facilitate this, emphasizing the importance and ease of this setup.
Simplified Service Onboarding: When onboarding new services, there's no need to create entirely new repositories. Instead, new directories can be created within the existing mono-repo.
Path-Aware Scorecard Checks: Scorecards in a mono-repo are aware of specific paths. This means that as long as the backstage.io/source-location is configured correctly to include the sub-path where a particular project resides, everything functions seamlessly. Also the ability to verify Library version and whether a file exists or not, ensures that each project within the mono-repo is treated as a distinct entity, with its checks and configurations

Conclusion

In conclusion, mono-repos offer a flexible and efficient approach to software development. With the ability to place YAML definitions anywhere, keep documentation organized, streamline service onboarding, and have precise path-aware checks, tools like Harness Internal Developer Portal make managing monorepos simpler and more effective. Whether you're a large enterprise or a growing startup, embracing these advantages can significantly enhance your development workflow.

Try out Harness Internal Developer Portal (IDP), we've got a wealth of resources to help you dive deeper. Please reach out to us for a demo. For a comprehensive understanding, our release blogs detail the latest features and updates. And if you're more of a visual learner, our video tutorials, and documentation offer step-by-step guides to get you started. Dive in and discover the transformative power of Harness IDP!

Got Monorepos Instead of Microservices? This is How Harness IDP Has Got You Covered

Debabrata Panigrahi — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 16:24:07 +0000

Got Monorepos Instead of Microservices? This is How Harness IDP Has Got You Covered

Software development is ever-changing, and so are the tools and methodologies developers use. While microservices are the recent buzz and discussions on mono vs poly-repos are ongoing, monorepos have been a staple for a long time. These monolithic repositories, which house code for multiple projects in a single location, have their merits. They simplify dependency management, make code reviews efficient, and offer a unified versioning system.

Monorepos, while beneficial in many ways, come with their set of problems for backstage/Internal Developer Portal use case:

How IDP takes special care of monorepos

This Harness Internal Developer Portal aims to enable organizations to handle mono-repos as efficiently as microservices, especially given the challenges they present. Here's How:

Location Flexibility with catalog-info.yaml: One of the standout features of the Harness Internal Developer Portal is its ability to recognize the catalog-info.yaml file, irrespective of its location in the repository.In a mono-repo, the YAML definition can be placed anywhere, offering immense flexibility in structuring. Fun fact - we love mono-repos here at Harness and our harness-core is managed using a mono-repo.
Localized Documentation: With mono-repos, documentation can reside within specific sub-directories, ensuring that related code and its documentation are closely knit. Backstage even offers a plugin to facilitate this, emphasizing the importance and ease of this setup.
Simplified Service Onboarding: When onboarding new services, there's no need to create entirely new repositories. Instead, new directories can be created within the existing mono-repo.
Path-Aware Scorecard Checks: Scorecards in a mono-repo are aware of specific paths. This means that as long as the backstage.io/source-location is configured correctly to include the sub-path where a particular project resides, everything functions seamlessly. Also the ability to verify Library version and whether a file exists or not, ensures that each project within the mono-repo is treated as a distinct entity, with its checks and configurations

Conclusion