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Packages Best Practices

Updated by @KeithResar on Sep 03, 2015
Article Code: kb/688

Overview

Packages are an invoked piece of software, uploaded to the cloud platform, which customizes a server template. Packages should adhere to the following best practices for increase maintainability and a consistent user deployment experience.

Related

Adhere to Published Package Maximums

See the published Package maximums and limits. While there are no size limitations note that the maximum execution time for a package is five minutes. This means large network transfers may exceed this limit and should be redesigned.

Mitigate this by:

  • Executing long-running tasks in the background so the primary task can exist.
  • In Linux, background tasks also need to close or redirect the stdout/stderr file descriptors (e.g., >/dev/null 2>&1).
  • If errors are encountered, your package should send an email to notify.

Changes to Existing Package Parameters

If your package is part of a Blueprint and the parameters change, this will not be reflected in the Blueprint itself until the Blueprint has been opened for editing and saved.

Parameter Visibility

Global parameters are shown towards the top of the wizard before any platform-level parameters (such as server password, group, etc.). Keeping all of your package parameters with a global scope keeps them in the same location. Script specific parameters are relegated to the bottom of the page and if not required may be missed.

Packages and Blueprint Visibility

Any packages that will be included in a Blueprint with a Shared or Public visibility level must have the same visibility. For example, Public Blueprints must reference only packages that are also public.

Software vs. Scripts

Lumen Cloud includes the concepts of grouping packages into classes of either Software or Scripts. All new package deployments should be classified as Scripts. We anticipate deprecating the Software class and many third-party tools have been created to support Scripts rather than software. There is zero functionality differentiation between the two classification types.