Backstage w/ Autogov plugin

Prerequisites

You will need Node v20 installed on your machine.

You will need yarn v4 installed on your machine.

Note: Make sure you have the correct versions of Node and Yarn installed. Using incorrect versions may lead to unexpected issues.

Initial Setup

Before proceeding, verify your development environment:

node --version  # Should show v20.x.x
yarn --version  # Should show v4.x.x

Setup GitHub

To use the Github APIs, a basic Github Auth token is required. It does not need access to any specific repositories, just basic read-access to public repositories.

GitHub Auth

GitHub Token

1. Go to GitHub Settings > Developer Settings > Personal Access Tokens
2. Create a new token with "Contents" repository permissions (read)
3. Create a .env file in the root directory
4. Add your token as GITHUB_TOKEN=your_token_here

For GITHUB_TOKEN:
Fine-grained access tokens for "Get a release asset"

This endpoint works with the following fine-grained token types:

GitHub App user access tokens
GitHub App installation access tokens
Fine-grained personal access tokens
The fine-grained token must have the following permission set:

"Contents" repository permissions (read)

Run the App

1. Install dependencies:

   yarn install

2. Start the application:

   yarn dev

Note: The application runs on http://localhost:3000 by default. You should see the Backstage interface once it's running.

Troubleshooting

Common issues and solutions:

• If yarn install fails, try clearing your yarn cache: yarn cache clean
• If the app doesn't start, check if all required environment variables are set in .env
• For plugin-related issues, ensure all plugin dependencies are correctly installed

Autogov Plugins

The following outlines what changes were made to a new Backstage instance to enable the Autogov Plugins. These changes are already done in this repo. The changes listed here are for informational purposes.

Enable dotenv

1. Modify the following scripts in the package.json file:

   "scripts": {
     "dev": "concurrently \"yarn start\" \"yarn start-backend\"",
     "start": "dotenv -e .env yarn workspace app start",
     "start-backend": "dotenv -e .env yarn workspace backend start",

2. add dependencies:

   yarn add concurrently
   yarn add dotenv
   yarn add dotenv-cli

Add Autogov Plugins

• To install to the Autogov Plugins to the appropriate place, run the following two commands:

  # from root
  yarn --cwd packages/app add @liatrio/backstage-plugin-autogov-releases-card@^1.6.2 @liatrio/backstage-plugin-autogov-status-catalog-column@^1.6.2
  yarn --cwd packages/backend add @liatrio/backstage-plugin-autogov-releases-backend@^1.6.2 @liatrio/backstage-plugin-backend-module-autogov-processor@^1.6.2

Note: After installing plugins, you may need to restart your development server for changes to take effect.

Contributing

See Contributing to Backstage GitHub Releases Autogov Plugin

Note: First time contributors should review the Contributing guide carefully before submitting any changes.