Enabling App Development

Enable in OnDemand v1.6+:

Here are example steps to enable a user efranz, assuming efranz’s home directory is at /home/efranz:

1. Create a symlink so OnDemand finds efranz’s apps:

   sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ood/apps/dev/efranz
   cd /var/www/ood/apps/dev/efranz
   sudo ln -s /home/efranz/ondemand/dev gateway
   

2. Have efranz access the Dashboard, and they will see the Develop drop-down.

Enable in OnDemand v1.4 & v1.5:

Here are example steps to enable a user efranz, assuming efranz’s home directory is at /home/efranz:

1. Create a symlink so OnDemand finds efranz’s apps:

   sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ood/apps/dev/efranz
   cd /var/www/ood/apps/dev/efranz
   sudo ln -s /home/efranz/ondemand/dev gateway
   

2. Create dev directory /home/efranz/ondemand/dev where efranz’s development apps will go (or ask efranz to do that).

3. Have efranz access the Dashboard, and they will see the Develop drop-down.

Enable in OnDemand v1.3:

Here are example steps to enable a user efranz, assuming efranz’s home directory is at /home/efranz:

1. Create dev directory /home/efranz/ondemand/dev where efranz’s development apps will go (or ask efranz to do that).

2. Have efranz access the Dashboard, and they will see the Develop drop-down. (if this doesn’t happen, )

Note

The rest of the documentation below assumes you are working with OnDemand 1.4+.

Specify dedicated host for development (optional)

The default host for the shell app is typically a login node. If this node does not contain a similar environment as the host OnDemand is installed on, including access to Software Collection (SCL) packages, it may be useful to provide developers a dedicated development host they can SSH to. This could even be the OnDemand host itself. If you configure the OnDemand dashboard to know about the dedicated development host, the dashboard will present links to open the shell app to this host.

To specify a dedicated development host so OnDemand, set OOD_DEV_SSH_HOST environment variable for the dashboard in the file /etc/ood/config/apps/dashboard/env. For example at OSC one of our OnDemand installs uses ondemand-test.osc.edu for the development host so we have this line: OOD_DEV_SSH_HOST=”ondemand-test.osc.edu”

Make everyone a developer by default (optional)

To revert to the way developer enabling worked in OnDemand 1.3, change the nginx_stage app_root configuration for development apps by modifying /etc/ood/config/nginx_stage.yml and replacing

app_root:
  dev: '/var/www/ood/apps/dev/%{owner}/gateway/%{name}'
  usr: '/var/www/ood/apps/usr/%{owner}/gateway/%{name}'
  sys: '/var/www/ood/apps/sys/%{name}'

with

app_root:
  dev: '~%{owner}/%{portal}/dev/%{name}'
  usr: '/var/www/ood/apps/usr/%{owner}/gateway/%{name}'
  sys: '/var/www/ood/apps/sys/%{name}'

Then users can just create the directory ~/ondemand/dev and the Develop drop-down will appear.

Warning

If you do this, it is recommended that you treat the node that OnDemand is running on as a login node, as you are effectively giving those users shell access by letting them run arbitrary code on the OnDemand node (of course the UID of the processes are still their regular unprivileged user UID).

If you do this, you still might want to restrict who sees the Develop drop-down in the Dashboard. To do that you can explicitly show or hide the drop-down in the Dashboard by setting Configuration.app_development_enabled to true based on one or more Ruby statements in the initializer /etc/ood/config/apps/dashboard/initializers/ood.rb. Code in the initializer runs as the user. This code also has access to the ood_support library in which we provide some helper classes to work with User’s and Groups. For example:

Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  Configuration.app_development_enabled = OodSupport::Process.groups.include?(
    OodSupport::Group.new("devgrp")
  )
end

Or if you know the id of the group, this will avoid reading the /etc/group file:

Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  Configuration.app_development_enabled = Process.groups.include?(5014)
end

Or a specific user list:

Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  Configuration.app_development_enabled = %w(
    bgohar efranz bmcmichael
  ).include?(OodSupport::User.new.name)
end