VFS Toolkit

The purpose of this gem is to allow engineers to quickly begin developing on VA.gov. It does this by providing a command line interface that allows the use of simple commands and parameters to do everything from setting up a development environment to building out a directory structure and creating necessary files for separating code into its own module.

The following assumes you have Ruby 2.6.6 or higher installed

Install it yourself as:

$ gem install vtk

To update to the latest version:

$ gem update vtk

Teams developing for vets-api should create their code as a module. This allows for the separation and easy identification of different projects. To scaffold a directory structure for your module, first cd into the vets-api directory, then enter the command below, substituting the name of your module for <module name>. This will build out a directory structure and create necessary files in the modules/ directory.

$ vtk module add <module name>

To add additional functionality to your module, the commands listed below are available for use. These commands can build out common functionality needed when working with a module and will be created within the given module space. When creating a new module component for a module space that does not currently exist, users will be prompted with the choice to create the module directory structure. As above, first cd into the vets-api directory, then enter the command below, substituting the name of your component for <component name>. You also MUST specify the name of the module by including -m <module name> after the component name.

$ vtk module controller <component name> -m <module name>
$ vtk module model <component name> -m <module name>
$ vtk module serializer <component name> -m <module name>
$ vtk module service <component name> -m <module name>

This above command runs a custom rails generator. For more information see the module generator documentation

Handles connecting to VA network via SOCKS.

$ vtk socks setup

The setup subcommand will do the following:

• Download the recommended .ssh/config if missing.
• Generate a VA SSH key if missing (and opens the access request form).
• Add your VA SSH key to your ssh agent and keychain.
• Test the SOCKS tunnel via SSH and HTTP
• Configure your system to start the SOCKS tunnel on boot
• Configure your system proxy for use on VA.gov domains (all other traffic bypasses the proxy).
• Allow you to troubleshoot your SOCKS connection by running it again.

NOTE: Running vtk socks on and/or vtk socks off is not necessary when using vtk socks setup.

$ vtk socks on
----> Connecting...
----> Connected to SOCKS.

To disconnect, run:

$ vtk socks off
----> Disconnected from SOCKS.

For helpful information about commands and subcommands run the following:

$ vtk -h
$ vtk module -h
$ vtk socks -h

If using the vtk gem in Docker, you may first need to run the following commands to avoid any errors:

$ make docker-clean
$ make build
$ make bash

1. Clone the repo
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Run the tests (bundle exec rake)
4. Commit your changes
5. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
6. Create new Pull Request

1. Merge in your approved pull requests
2. Update the version to be whatever it should (in lib/vtk/version.rb) be and commit
   • The version bump could also be part of your PR
3. bundle exec rake release
   • This will tag the release and publish to RubyGems
4. Update the changelog — (github_changelog_generator -u department-of-veterans-affairs -p vtk)