Balena CLI

The official balena CLI tool.

Requisites

If you want to install the CLI directly through npm, you'll need the below. If this looks difficult, we do now have an experimental standalone binary release available, see 'Standalone install' below.

• NodeJS (>= v6)
• Git
• The following executables should be correctly installed in your shell environment:
  • ssh: Any recent version of the OpenSSH ssh client (required by balena sync and balena ssh)
    • if you need ssh to work behind the proxy you also need proxytunnel installed (available as proxytunnel package for Ubuntu, for example)
  • rsync: >= 2.6.9 (required by balena sync)

Windows Support

Before installing balena-cli, you'll need a working node-gyp environment. If you don't already have one you'll see native module build errors during installation. To fix this, run npm install -g --production windows-build-tools in an administrator console (available as 'Command Prompt (Admin)' when pressing windows+x in Windows 7+).

balena sync and balena ssh have not been thoroughly tested on the standard Windows cmd.exe shell. We recommend using bash (or a similar) shell, like Bash for Windows 10 or Git for Windows.

If you still want to use cmd.exe you will have to use a package manager like MinGW or chocolatey. For MinGW the steps are:

1. Install MinGW.
2. Install the msys-rsync and msys-openssh packages.
3. Add MinGW to the %PATH% if this hasn't been done by the installer already. The location where the binaries are places is usually C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin, but it can vary if you selected a different location in the installer.
4. Copy your SSH keys to %homedrive%%homepath\.ssh.
5. If you need ssh to work behind the proxy you also need to install proxytunnel

Getting Started

NPM install

If you've got all the requirements above, you should be able to install the CLI directly from npm. If not, or if you have any trouble with this, please try the new standalone install steps just below.

This might require elevated privileges in some environments.

$ npm install balena-cli -g --production --unsafe-perm

--unsafe-perm is only required on systems where the global install directory is not user-writable. This allows npm install steps to download and save prebuilt native binaries. You may be able to omit it, especially if you're using a user-managed node install such as nvm.

In some environments, this process will need to build native modules. This may require a more complex build environment, and notably requires Python 2.7. If you hit any problems with this, we recommend you try the alternative standalone install below instead.

Standalone install

If you don't have node or a working pre-gyp environment, you can still install the CLI as a standalone binary. This is experimental and may not work perfectly yet in all environments, but it seems to work well in initial cross-platform testing, so it may be useful, and we'd love your feedback if you hit any issues.

To install the CLI as a standalone binary:

• Download the latest zip for your OS from https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli/releases.
• Extract the contents, putting the balena-cli folder somewhere appropriate for your system (e.g. C:/balena-cli, /usr/local/lib/balena-cli, etc).
• Add the balena-cli folder to your PATH (Windows instructions, Linux instructions, OSX instructions)
• Running balena in a fresh command line should print the balena CLI help.

To update in future, simply download a new release and replace the extracted folder.

Have any problems, or see any unexpected behaviour? Please file an issue!

Login

$ balena login

(Typically useful, but not strictly required for all commands)

Run commands

Take a look at the full command documentation at https://balena.io/docs/tools/cli/, or by running balena help.

Bash completions

Optionally you can enable tab completions for the bash shell, enabling the shell to provide additional context and automatically complete arguments tobalena. To enable bash completions, copy the balena-completion.bash file to the default bash completions directory (usually /etc/bash_completion.d/) or append it to the end of ~/.bash_completion.

FAQ

Where is my configuration file?

The per-user configuration file lives in $HOME/.balenarc.yml or %UserProfile%\_balenarc.yml, in Unix based operating systems and Windows respectively.

The balena CLI also attempts to read a balenarc.yml file in the current directory, which takes precedence over the per-user configuration file.

How do I point the balena CLI to staging?

The easiest way is to set the BALENARC_BALENA_URL=balena-staging.com environment variable.

Alternatively, you can edit your configuration file and set balenaUrl: balena-staging.com to persist this setting.

How do I make the balena CLI persist data in another directory?

The balena CLI persists your session token, as well as cached images in $HOME/.balena or %UserProfile%\_balena.

Pointing the balena CLI to persist data in another location is necessary in certain environments, like a server, where there is no home directory, or a device running balenaOS, which erases all data after a restart.

You can accomplish this by setting BALENARC_DATA_DIRECTORY=/opt/balena or adding dataDirectory: /opt/balena to your configuration file, replacing /opt/balena with your desired directory.

Support

If you're having any problems, check our troubleshooting guide and if your problem is not addressed there, please raise an issue on GitHub and the balena team will be happy to help.

You can also get in touch with us in the balena forums.

Development guidelines

The CLI was originally written in CoffeeScript, but we have decided to migrate to TypeScript in order to take advantage of static typing and formal programming interfaces. The migration is taking place gradually, as part of maintenance work or the implementation of new features.

After cloning this repository and running npm install you can build the CLI using npm run build. You can then run the generated build using ./bin/balena. In order to ease development:

• you can build the CLI using the npm run build:fast variant which skips some of the build steps or
• you can use ./bin/balena-dev which live transpiles the sources of the CLI.

In either case, before opening a PR make sure to also test your changes after doing a full build with npm run build.

License

The project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.