Fdk cli: skip the upgrade question with an argument

Hi,

I am developing a custom app for our FreshDesk instance. I try to validate and build this automatically with our CI/CD infra. I do this with Docker.
The problem is that I am facing ‘failed builds’ where the CLI FDK asks to update itself. It’s a very cool feature that it does an update check, but I would love to be able to skip it with a command line argument so my CI build process doesn’t break immediatly when you release a new version.

So, on my CI I would be able to do fdk pack --skip-version-check so it would always pack the app.

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Hi @Jeroen_Peters

I really appreciate you bringing up this topic of discussion. We have just come across once or twice in the past where developers requested a feature like this. One of our Knowledge gaps is not knowing how developers use fdk as part of their CI process.

If you don’t mind, could you spare some time to help us understand the following things?

  1. What is your role at your organization, and how does app development help you? Maybe introduce yourself.
  2. We usually envision developers zip their app code publish it once as a custom app or marketplace. But involving the CI process means build is recurring frequently. Could you help me understand how this is set up to ease your workflow?

At the very moment, I will convert this topic to a feedback topic. This will help us influence the product management process and prioritize the right requests those benefit the developer community.

Hi @Saif! Thanks for your reply and great to see I can influence the development process of fdk from here. I have to say, it’s complicated to find out how to do this exactly. For me as a developer it wasn’t clear where/how I could submit this. I checked out github first, but could not find the project.

I am Jeroen, Developer at Yourhosting, a hostingcompany in the Netherlands which is using FreshDesk as the support system for a little while now. We have multiple labels, so we are using a Serverless app to update/append customer details on ticket creation/update.

Because we have multiple developers, from different labels/organisations, I created the skeleton app with update code for my label. Other developers create some code for their label but as far as I am concerned they don’t have to know the ins and outs of the custom app deployment.
That is why I created a little pipeline in our Gitlab instance, which builds the app (with a Docker instance, which contains FDK) so all I have to do is download it and and (as you envision) upload the zipfile as a custom app in freshdev.io

This saves me time, and other developers don’t necessarily have to have all the requirements installed. I can just go to Gitlab, download the zipfile and deploy it. The app then has been updated, checked/validated and packed for me.

The problem is, when Gitlab does a fdk pack and there is a new version, it prompts to download the new version and then my process hangs (as this is not an interactive process) and gets cancelled. Leaving me with a broken build pipeline and still having to do the manual work. This is why I ask for a skip-update option so i can update the Docker image myself regularly on bigger updates.

To clarify, if this process works I still have to upload the zip every time, this is not automated.

I hope this will clarify things for you, if you still have questions I’d be happy to reply.

Kind regards, Jeroen Peters

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I second this.

I’d already raised this several months ago to be able to integrate in my CI/CD pipeline.

Not just suppress the prompts, but also have a command to publish the generated zip file so that there is no manual intervention involved in having to publish it.

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Ofcourse that would be great too, but a first step to just ‘quietly’ do the packaging, would be a good first time from my point of view

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Hi @Saif, I see you liked my reply on why I would want this. But is there any other way for us to track if this question is getting to the FDK developers en what this might mean in terms of implementation or rejection?

Thanks for asking, Jeroen.

We are in early terms to make this process visible for developers.

If you look at ‘Feedback’ category and open ‘Progress’ sub category, its the place where we are planning to make this process visible implementation wise. Select ‘Feedback Status’ within the subcategory.

This process is just set up and will try to manage posting updates as per Devrels visibility as of now.

Not yet concrete, this may subject to change over time.