Installing the CLI

Valist can be installed globally on your system with NPM using the following command.

npm install -g valist

Initiate config file

To ensure that you have the correct structure in the main configuration file, you can run a command to generate the boilerplate for either static apps or apps that need to run a web server in Docker.

valist init --type docker

This will produce a file called valist-conf.json in the current working directory with the following contents. Change the port to the one that your web server inside the Docker container is listening to. If your Dockerfile is called something else, change the path to the file.

{
    "docker": {
        "build": "./Dockerfile",
        "port": 80
    }
}

If your applications is a static app, start with the following configuration.

valist init --type static

This will produce a file called valist-conf.json with the following contents. Change the dist path to the directory inside the container where your website files are located. Replace the cmd with the command that needs to run in your application to build all the static assets such as CSS, HTML, JS, etc.

{
    "static": {
        "build": "./Dockerfile",
        "dist": "/path/to/static_files",
        "cmd": ["your-build-command"]
    }
}

Run Valist locally

When making changes to your configuration file, it is more convenient to test that it is working locally before pushing the changes to your version control system. This will allow you to more effectively debug and test the building of your application in the same way that it will happen in Valist.

valist local

This will produce output like below when done building your Docker image, running your build command for static apps and launching your application locally. You can test your app by going to the generated URL where your app is hosted locally.

✔ Built image: valist-app-9049986889102102
App is available at http://localhost:50000