Setting Up Clarity's CLI Tools

Liferay provides two powerful CLI tools to streamline your development and cloud management workflows: Blade CLI and Liferay Cloud CLI. Clarity Vision Solutions recognizes the value of both these tools. They'll leverage Blade CLI to enhance their local development processes and Liferay Cloud CLI to efficiently deploy and manage client extensions within their Liferay SaaS project. In the following exercises, you'll install these tools and familiarize yourself with some basic commands.

Exercise: Installing Blade CLI

Blade CLI simplifies local development tasks, such as creating workspaces, generating projects, and deploying to local servers. Here, you'll install Blade using Liferay’s graphical installer.

1. Go to the Liferay IDE Github Repo release page.
2. Download the most recent LiferayWorkspace executable for your operating system (Windows, MacOS, or Linux).
3. Run the installer.
4. Click Next to step through the installer’s introduction.
5. Select Don’t initialize Liferay Workspace directory and click Next.
   
6. Select Skip proxy configuration and click Next.
   If you're behind a proxy server, please see Creating a Liferay Workspace for how to configure your proxy.
7. Click Next to begin installing Liferay Workspace on your machine.
8. Click Finish when completed.

Once finished, run the following commands to verify Blade is ready to use and up to date.

Validating Your Blade Installation

1. Open a terminal window and run this command to check your Blade version:

   blade version
   

   NOTE
   When using macOS or Linux, the installer may not add the blade command to your $PATH. You can add it manually by running the following command and restarting your terminal:

   macOS:

   echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/Library/PackageManager/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

   Linux:

   echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/jpm/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

2. Run this command to ensure Blade is up to date:

   blade update
   

   Updating Blade ensures you’re able to initiate workspaces for the latest Liferay releases, updated quarterly. Blade should begin updating automatically if an update is available.

3. Run this command to view available Blade commands:

   blade help
   

   When you run this command within a Liferay workspace, it includes additional commands.

Exercise: Installing Liferay Cloud CLI

Liferay Cloud CLI focuses on managing your cloud environments and deployments, particularly for Liferay's PaaS and SaaS offerings. Here, you’ll install Liferay Cloud CLI.

• For *nix Systems
  Open your terminal, and run this command:

  curl https://cdn.liferay.cloud/lcp/stable/latest/install.sh -fsSL | bash

  If you get a permissions error, replace bash with sudo bash and run it again.
• For Windows Systems
  Download the latest version of the Windows installer, and follow the steps in the wizard. After the installation completes, Liferay Cloud CLI should be ready to use!

Once finished, run the following commands to verify Liferay Cloud CLI is ready to use and up to date.

Validating Your Installation

1. Open a terminal window and run this command to check your Liferay Cloud CLI version:

   lcp version
   

2. Run this command to ensure Liferay Cloud CLI is up to date:

   lcp update
   

3. Run this command to view available Liferay Cloud CLI commands:

   lcp help
   

To use the core Liferay Cloud CLI features, you must have a Liferay PaaS or SaaS project. You’ll learn more about this tool in Module 7: Working with Liferay Cloud.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve installed the Liferay CLI tools that Clarity’s developers need to streamline their development workflows, efficiently building, deploying, and managing solutions both locally and in the cloud. Next, you’ll learn about available IDE tools that Clarity can use to further accelerate development.