Getting Started

Welcome! Transform your deployment workflow with CentralCI and Concourse - let’s build your first pipeline together!

Important
This tutorial assumes you understand what Linux containers are and how to work with them. If you know what a Dockerfile is and how to make your own then you're probably good to jump into this tutorial. If you're not familiar with Linux containers then you may want to get started with Docker first before diving into this tutorial.

It will also help if you know how to read YAML. We have a quick Intro to YAML if you’re not familiar with the syntax.

Concourse CI is a powerful open source CI/CD platform that liberates your pipelines through declarative configs and 100+ integrations. CentralCI runs a Concourse cluster for you at https://No Org.centralci.com.

1. Login with the fly CLI

To interact with Concourse, install the fly CLI tool (MacOS, Windows or Linux) and log in. fly is Concourse’s command-line interface (CLI) tool.

Tip
fly -t ci login -c https://No Org.centralci.com

2. Deploy a Hello World pipeline

Create a new file called pipeline.yml (or consult fly -h):

---
jobs:
- name: hello-world-job
  plan:
  - task: hello-world-task
    config:
      # Tells Concourse which type of worker this task should run on
      platform: linux
      # We'll use this container image for our task - more on these container resources later
      image_resource:
        type: registry-image
        source:
          repository: busybox # images are pulled from docker hub by default
      # The command Concourse will run inside the container
      run:
        path: echo
        args: ["Hello world!"]

Deploy your pipeline:

fly -t centralci set-pipeline -p hello -c pipeline.yml

Unpause your pipeline:

fly -t centralci unpause-pipeline -p hello

3. Key Concepts

  • Pipelines: Your entire workflow defined in YAML
  • Jobs: Units of work combining tasks and resources
  • Tasks: The actual commands to run
  • Resources: External things your pipeline interacts with (git repos, S3 buckets, etc.)

4. Next Steps

Last updated on January 1, 2025