IBM Cloud recently introduced the IBM Starter Kit Collection for OpenShift. Install this open source collection to add the most popular IBM Cloud starter kits to your OpenShift Developer Catalog.

IBM Cloud starter kits are cloud-ready code samples that provide a quick path to getting up and running on the cloud. After you install the starter kit collection, any developer with access to your OpenShift cluster can get an app running in their language of choice with just a couple of clicks.

Easily connect to IBM public cloud from OpenShift

Many of the starter kits in the collection include bindings to services on IBM Cloud managed services. The collection currently includes starters that connect to Watson Natural Language Understanding, Watson Speech to Text, Watson Text to Speech, Watson Visual Recognition, and Cloudant databases. The starter kits use the IBM Cloud Operator to connect to these services, and they can connect from any OpenShift cluster with access to IBM public cloud. 

Install the IBM Starter Kit Collection for OpenShift

The IBM starter kit collection is open sourced here. Follow these steps to install:

1. Log in to IBM Cloud and connect to your OpenShift cluster.
2. Make sure that your cluster has the IBM Cloud Operator installed.
3. Download and run this bash script. Be sure to make the script executable chmod +x install.sh.
4. When the script completes, wait a few minutes and then reload the Developer Catalog in your cluster console. Filter on publisher IBM to find the newly installed starter kits. 

Installation tips

• The new template will appear in the Developer Catalog for the default project for your cluster. You can add the starters to other projects by modifying the installation script to include the -n flag. For example, oc apply -f templates/go-gin-app.json -n test_project will install the starter in the project named test_project, and oc apply -f templates/go-gin-app.json -n openshift will install the starter into the cluster Service Catalog.
• If you want to uninstall a single starter, you can run the oc delete command from your terminal: oc delete -f templates/go-gin-app.json -n test_project
• If you want to uninstall all the starters in the collection, you can download and run the uninstall script.

Create starter apps

Simply click one of the IBM starter tiles in your OpenShift Developer Catalog and follow the wizard to deploy your app.

More information

Follow the links below for more information:

• IBM Cloud starter kits
• Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud