nargetdev / balena-cli

The official balena CLI tool.

balena CLI

The official balena CLI tool.

About

The balena CLI (Command-Line Interface) allows you to interact with the balenaCloud and the balena API through a terminal window on Linux, macOS or Windows. You can also write shell scripts around it, or import its Node.js modules to use it programmatically. As an open-source project on GitHub, your contribution is also welcome!

Installation

Check the balena CLI installation instructions on GitHub.

Getting Started

Choosing a shell (command prompt/terminal)

On Windows, the standard Command Prompt (cmd.exe) and PowerShell are supported. We are aware of users also having a good experience with alternative shells, including:

• MSYS2:
  • Install additional packages with the command:
    pacman -S git openssh rsync
  • Set a Windows environment variable: MSYS2_PATH_TYPE=inherit
  • Note that a bug in the MSYS2 launch script (msys2_shell.cmd) makes text-based interactive CLI menus to break. Check this Github issue for a workaround.
• MSYS: select the msys-rsync and msys-openssh packages too
• Git for Windows
  • During the installation, you will be prompted to choose between "Use MinTTY" and "Use Windows' default console window". Choose the latter, because of the same MSYS2 bug mentioned above (Git for Windows actually uses MSYS2). For a screenshot, check this comment.
• Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). In this case, a Linux distribution like Ubuntu is installed via the Microsoft Store, and a balena CLI release for Linux is recommended. See FAQ for using balena CLI with WSL and Docker Desktop for Windows.

On macOS and Linux, the standard terminal window is supported. Optionally, bash command auto completion may be enabled by copying the balena-completion.bash file to your system's bash_completion directory: check Docker's command completion guide for system setup instructions.

Logging in

Several CLI commands require access to your balenaCloud account, for example in order to push a new release to your application. Those commands require creating a CLI login session by running:

$ balena login

Proxy support

HTTP(S) proxies can be configured through any of the following methods, in order of preference:

• Set the BALENARC_PROXY environment variable in URL format (with protocol, host, port, and optionally basic auth).
• Alternatively, use the balena config file (project-specific or user-level) and set the proxy setting. It can be:
  • A string in URL format, or
  • An object in the global-tunnel-ng options format (which allows more control).
• Alternatively, set the conventional https_proxy / HTTPS_PROXY / http_proxy / HTTP_PROXY environment variable (in the same standard URL format).

To get a proxy to work with the balena ssh command, check the installation instructions.

Command reference documentation

The full CLI command reference is available on the web or by running balena help and balena help --verbose.

Support, FAQ and troubleshooting

If you come across any problems or would like to get in touch:

• Check our FAQ / troubleshooting document.
• Ask us a question through the balenaCloud forum.
• For bug reports or feature requests, have a look at the GitHub issues or create a new one.

Contributing (including editing documentation files)

Please have a look at the CONTRIBUTING.md file for some guidance before submitting a pull request or updating documentation (because some files are automatically generated). Thank you for your help and interest!

License

The project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. A copy is also available in the LICENSE file in this repository.