Lesson 3.5: Deployment patterns

Difficulty: Intermediate | Duration: 12 min | Prerequisites: Lesson 3.1

Overview

Ship the bowire CLI into a non-laptop environment — an internal-tools container, a CI runner, a sidecar — and keep it configured across layers.

Layered configuration

Bowire reads settings in standard .NET precedence — later layers win:

  1. appsettings.json sections (Bowire:Mock, Bowire:Cli, Bowire:Test, Bowire:Plugin, …)
  2. BOWIRE_* environment variables
  3. CLI flags
// appsettings.json
{ "Bowire": { "Mock": { "Port": 6000 }, "PluginUpdateCheck": { "Enabled": false } } }

BOWIRE_Bowire__Mock__Port=7000 bowire mock rec.bwr        # env overrides appsettings
bowire mock rec.bwr --port 8000                           # flag overrides both

Container

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:10.0 AS build
RUN dotnet tool install --global Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Tool
ENV PATH="$PATH:/root/.dotnet/tools"
ENTRYPOINT ["bowire", "mock", "/data/recording.bwr", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "6000"]

Bind --host 0.0.0.0 so the mock is reachable outside the container; mount recordings/workspaces as volumes.

systemd (host the CLI as a service)

# /etc/systemd/system/bowire-mock.service
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bowire mock /srv/bowire/recording.bwr --host 0.0.0.0 --port 6000
Restart=always
Environment=BOWIRE_PluginUpdateCheck__Enabled=false
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reverse-proxy in front

Terminate TLS and route at nginx/Traefik; Bowire listens plain on the loopback/pod-internal port. Lock the workbench URL in shared deploys with --lock-server-url, and gate the workbench out of production builds (embedded hosts: wrap AddBowire()/MapBowire() in IsDevelopment() — see Unit 4).

Key Takeaways

  1. Config layers: appsettings.json → BOWIRE_* env → CLI flags (later wins).
  2. Containerise the global tool with --host 0.0.0.0 and volume-mounted recordings.
  3. Front it with a reverse-proxy for TLS; keep update-checks/telemetry opt-in for shared installs.

What's Next

Continue: → Lesson 3.6: Observability & operations

Reference