What is a manifest file?
Introduction to manifest files and their purpose
What is a manifest file?
A manifest files allows you to be more explicit about your application composition and control settings that are not usually available through the user interface or Cloud 66 toolbelt. The file describes the setup of the components that make up your application.
These are just some examples of the settings you can control with a manifest file:
- Defining sizes and data center region for your servers
- Installing extra packages
- Specifying the version of a component
- Configuring application components to share a server
- Customizing component-specific configurations
Editing a manifest file
Every application automatically has a manifest file. To edit the manifest file for a containerized application:
- Navigate to the application for the app in question
- Click on ⚙️ Settings in the left-hand nav
- Click on Manifest File in the sub-nav that opens
You can now edit the text of your manifest file directly.
Be cautious when editing the manifest file for any application particularly if it is running in a production environment. A single stray character or space can cause the application to fail to deploy or to deploy in a degraded state.
The manifest file is YAML formatted. You can check its validity at YAML Validator or with this command:
$ ruby -e "require 'yaml'; YAML.load_file('.cloud66/manifest.yml')"