CDOrg: A Beginner’s Guide to Getting StartedCDOrg is a configuration-driven organizational tool designed to help teams manage deployments, infrastructure, and application configuration in a consistent, auditable way. This guide walks you through the core concepts, setup, and practical workflows so you can start using CDOrg confidently.
What is CDOrg?
At its core, CDOrg centralizes configuration and deployment definitions into a single source of truth. Instead of scattering environment settings, scripts, and ad-hoc instructions across repositories and README files, CDOrg encourages you to declare infrastructure and application behavior as structured configuration artifacts. That makes reproducible deployments, safer rollouts, and clearer audit trails much easier.
Key benefits
- Consistency: standardized configuration across environments.
- Auditability: changes are tracked and reviewable.
- Reusability: components and templates reduce duplication.
- Safety: validation and policy checks prevent dangerous changes.
Core concepts
- Configuration bundle: a packaged set of manifests, templates, and metadata that describes how an application or service should be deployed and configured.
- Environment profiles: environment-specific overrides (e.g., dev, staging, prod) that adjust parameters without changing the core bundle.
- Components and modules: reusable building blocks for common services (databases, caches, ingress rules).
- Policies and validators: rules that inspect configuration for compliance, security, or best practices before deployment.
- Deployment drivers/integrations: connectors to CI/CD systems, cloud providers, and orchestration platforms.
Installation and prerequisites
- System requirements: CDOrg runs on common Linux/macOS systems; ensure you have a recent Git client and either Docker (for local testing) or direct cloud credentials for deployments.
- CLI or UI: most users start with the CDOrg CLI for scripting and automation, though a web UI may be available depending on your installation.
- Authentication: configure a service account or token so CDOrg can interact with your target platforms (e.g., Kubernetes API, cloud provider APIs, CI runners).
Example (CLI installation):
# macOS (Homebrew) brew install cdorg # Linux (tarball + install) wget https://example.com/cdorg-latest.tar.gz tar -xzf cdorg-latest.tar.gz sudo mv cdorg /usr/local/bin/ First project: create a configuration bundle
- Initialize a repo:
mkdir myservice-cdorg cd myservice-cdorg git init cdorg init - Structure:
- bundle.yaml — main manifest
- components/ — reusable parts
- envs/dev.yaml, envs/prod.yaml — environment overrides
- templates/ — deployment templates
-
Example bundle.yaml “`yaml name: myservice version: 0.1.0 components:
- web
- db “`
-
Add a simple component (components/web.yaml) “`yaml name: web type: deployment image: myorg/myservice:0.1.0 ports:
- 8080 “`
Environment overrides
Use environment profiles to change settings per environment without modifying the bundle:
envs/dev.yaml
replicas: 1 imageTag: latest envs/prod.yaml
replicas: 3 imageTag: stable resources: limits: cpu: "500m" memory: "512Mi" Apply with:
cdorg apply --env prod Templates and variables
Templates let you parameterize manifests so a single template serves multiple use cases.
templates/deployment.tpl.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: {{ .name }} spec: replicas: {{ .replicas }} template: spec: containers: - name: {{ .name }} image: {{ .image }}:{{ .imageTag }} ports: - containerPort: {{ .ports[0] }} Render locally:
cdorg render --env dev Policies and validations
Before deploying, run validators to catch issues early.
Example policy: ensure no containers run as root.
policies: - name: no-root check: containers.securityContext.runAsNonRoot == true Run:
cdorg validate Integrating with CI/CD
Common pattern:
- Commit bundle changes to Git.
- CI pipeline runs cdorg validate and cdorg render.
- On merge to main, CI triggers cdorg apply to target environment.
Example (GitHub Actions snippet):
jobs: deploy: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - name: Install CDOrg run: curl -sSL https://example.com/install.sh | bash - name: Validate run: cdorg validate - name: Deploy to prod if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' run: cdorg apply --env prod Rollbacks and change management
- Every apply produces an auditable change record (release ID).
- To rollback:
cdorg rollback --release 2025-08-01-42 - Use feature flags and canary profiles to stage rollouts.
Best practices
- Keep environment overrides minimal; prefer parameterization.
- Use components/modules for shared services.
- Enforce policies in CI, not just locally.
- Review changes via pull requests with rendered diffs.
- Tag releases and align image tags with bundle versions.
Common troubleshooting
- Validation fails: run cdorg lint and inspect policy messages.
- Mismatched secrets: ensure secret backends (vault/secret manager) are configured per environment.
- Deployment driver errors: verify credentials and network access.
Example workflow summary
- Create bundle and components locally.
- Commit to Git and open a pull request.
- CI runs cdorg validate and shows rendered diffs.
- After review, merge to main.
- CI runs cdorg apply to production with policies enforced.
- Monitor and rollback if necessary.
Resources to learn more
- Official docs (installation, reference, policies)
- Example bundles and community templates
- Guides on templating and CI integration
If you want, I can convert this into a shorter quick-start cheat sheet, add sample bundles for a specific platform (Kubernetes, AWS ECS), or write the GitHub Actions pipeline tailored to your environment.
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