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Scaffold

Now that you have Invenio-CLI installed, we will use it to scaffold a new instance of InvenioRDM.

Initialize project

First, we need to create the project - the necessary files and folders for your InvenioRDM instance. You'll want to commit the generated project into a version control system, as it will contain the customizations for your repository. If you're working on an existing repository you can skip the scaffolding step, as it only has to be done once.

The CLI will require the following data:

  • Project name: Title of your project with space allowed (project name for humans)
  • Project short name: Hyphenated and lowercased title (project name for machines)
  • Project website: URL where the project will be deployed
  • GitHub repository: Repository in format <owner>/<code repository>
  • Description: Short description of project
  • Author name: Your name or that of your organization
  • Author email: Email for communication
  • Year: The current year
  • Database: PostgreSQL (default) - we hope to support MySQL in the future.
  • Search: OpenSearch 2 (default), OpenSearch 1 or Elasticsearch 7 (deprecated)
  • Storage backend: Local file system (default) or in a S3-like backend. If S3 is chosen a MinIO container is provided.
  • Development tools: Yes if you want to add extra development tools (e.g. OpenSearch Dashboard) to your instance.
  • Site code: Yes if you want to add custom code to your instance.
  • Reduced vocabularies: Yes builds a full set of language, license and name vocabularies. No uses a reduced set for faster setup.

It will also generate a test private key which is needed for SSL support in the development server.

Let's do it! Pressing [Enter] selects the option in brackets [].

invenio-cli init rdm -c <version>

Where <version> should be replaced with the version you want to install, e.g.:

  • LTS release (for production systems): v9.1
  • STS release (for feature previews): v10.0
Initializing RDM application...
Running cookiecutter...
project_name [My Site]:
project_shortname [my-site]:
project_site [my-site.com]:
github_repo [my-site/my-site]:
description [My Site InvenioRDM Instance]:
author_name [CERN]:
author_email [info@my-site.com]:
year [2023]:
Choose from 1 [1]:
Select database:
1 - postgresql
Choose from 1, 2, 3 [1]:
Select elasticsearch:
1 - opensearch2
2 - opensearch1
3 - elasticsearch7
Choose from 1, 2 [1]:
Select file_storage:
1 - local
2 - S3
Choose from 1, 2 [1]:
Select development_tools:
1 - yes
2 - no
Choose from 1, 2 [1]:
Select site_code:
1 - yes
2 - no
Choose from 1, 2 [1]:
Select use_reduced_vocabs:
1 - no
2 - yes
Choose from 1, 2 [1]:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Generating SSL certificate and private key for testing....
Generating a 4096 bit RSA private key
...................................................................................................++
.............................................++
writing new private key to 'docker/nginx/test.key'
-----
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Writing invenio-invenio_cli config file...
Creating logs directory...

Project structure

You can now inspect the generated project structure:

cd my-site
ls -a1

.
..
.dockerignore
.gitignore
.invenio
.invenio.private
Dockerfile
Pipfile
README.md
app_data
assets
docker
docker-compose.full.yml
docker-compose.yml
docker-services.yml
invenio.cfg
logs
static
templates

Following is an overview of the generated files and folders:

Name Description
Dockerfile Dockerfile used to build your application image.
Pipfile Python requirements installed via pipenv
Pipfile.lock Locked requirements (generated on first install).
app_data Application data for e.g. vocabularies.
assets Web assets (CSS, JavaScript, LESS, JSX templates) used in the Webpack build.
docker Example configuration for NGINX and uWSGI for running InvenioRDM.
docker-compose.full.yml Example of a full infrastructure stack (DO NOT use in production!)
docker-compose.yml Backend services needed for local development.
docker-services.yml Common services for the Docker Compose files.
invenio.cfg The Invenio application configuration.
logs Log files.
static Static files that need to be served as-is (e.g. images).
templates Folder for your Jinja templates.
.invenio Common file used by Invenio-CLI to be version controlled.
.invenio.private Private file used by Invenio-CLI not to be version controlled.

Notes and known issues

  • You may be prompted with You've downloaded /home/<username>/.cookiecutters/cookiecutter-invenio-rdm before. Is it okay to delete and re-download it? [yes]:. Press [Enter] in that case. This will download the latest cookiecutter template.

  • Some OpenSSL versions display an error message when obtaining random numbers, but this has no incidence (as far as we can tell) on functionality. We are investigating a possible solution to raise less eyebrows for appearance sake.