Overview

What do you need to know

In addition to the development skills required to create the application, you must be familiar with:

• Using docker and creating docker images
• Creating Helm charts for Kubernetes
• Deploying applications to Kubernetes clusters using Helm charts
• The Great Bear Application Package format

Limitations and requirements

For your application to work optimally with Great Bear, note the following points.

• Your application should be able to accept parameters via environment variables. This is the main method to pass user-specified configuration parameters and other information from Great Bear to the applications.
• Currently Great Bear does not provide any local storage solutions for the application data.
• If your application has any external component that is not deployed to edge, it must be developed and managed independently from the application uploaded to the Great Bear Application Store.

App development process overview

The high-level process of developing an application for Great Bear consists of the following steps.

1. Create the application.
2. Build a docker image of the application. Make sure to create the image for the architecture of your Great Bear nodes. If you want the application to run on multiple architectures (for example, in generic x86_64 virtual machines and on physical ARM-based hardware), create a multiarch image.
3. Download and install the Great Bearing Packaging SDK Tool.
4. Use the Packaging SDK Tool to create your Great Bear Application Package.
5. Use the Packaging SDK Tool to validate your Great Bear Application Package.
6. Use the Packaging SDK Tool to publish your Great Bear Application Package to the Great Bear platform.
7. Deploy your application to your Great Bear sites from the Application Store.