OpenWhisk - Installation

Installing Node.js

Serverless is a Node.js CLI tool so the first thing you need to do is to install Node.js on your machine.

Go to the official Node.js website, download and follow the installation instructions to install Node.js on your local machine.

Note: Serverless runs on Node v4 or higher.

You can verify that Node.js is installed successfully by running node --version in your terminal. You should see the corresponding Node version number printed out.

Installing the Serverless Framework

Next, install the Serverless Framework via npm which was already installed when you installed Node.js.

Open up a terminal and type npm install -g serverless to install Serverless.

npm install -g serverless

Once the installation process is done you can verify that Serverless is installed successfully by running the following command in your terminal:

serverless

To see which version of serverless you have installed run:

serverless --version

Installing OpenWhisk Provider Plugin

Now we need to install the provider plugin to allow the framework to deploy services to the platform. This plugin is also published on npm and can installed as a project dependency using the npm install --save-dev command.

npm install serverless-openwhisk --save-dev

Project templates already have this dependency listed in the package.json file allowing you to just npm install in the service directory.

The serverless-openwhisk plugin must be saved as a devDependency in the project's package.json to ensure it is not bundled in the deployment package.

Setting up OpenWhisk

To run serverless commands that interface with the OpenWhisk platform, you will need to setup your OpenWhisk account credentials on your machine.

Follow these instructions on setting up OpenWhisk credentials

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OpenWhisk - Installation

Installing Node.js

Serverless is a Node.js CLI tool so the first thing you need to do is to install Node.js on your machine.

Go to the official Node.js website, download and follow the installation instructions to install Node.js on your local machine.

Note: Serverless runs on Node v4 or higher.

You can verify that Node.js is installed successfully by running node --version in your terminal. You should see the corresponding Node version number printed out.

Installing the Serverless Framework

Next, install the Serverless Framework via npm which was already installed when you installed Node.js.

Open up a terminal and type npm install -g serverless to install Serverless.

npm install -g serverless

Once the installation process is done you can verify that Serverless is installed successfully by running the following command in your terminal:

serverless

To see which version of serverless you have installed run:

serverless --version

Installing OpenWhisk Provider Plugin

Now we need to install the provider plugin to allow the framework to deploy services to the platform. This plugin is also published on npm and can installed as a project dependency using the npm install --save-dev command.

npm install serverless-openwhisk --save-dev

Project templates already have this dependency listed in the package.json file allowing you to just npm install in the service directory.

The serverless-openwhisk plugin must be saved as a devDependency in the project's package.json to ensure it is not bundled in the deployment package.

Setting up OpenWhisk

To run serverless commands that interface with the OpenWhisk platform, you will need to setup your OpenWhisk account credentials on your machine.

Follow these instructions on setting up OpenWhisk credentials