Rancher Extension how-to

Rancher Extensions is a feature introduced in Rancher v2.7.

Create the extension

Follow Getting started:

# creates skeleton
yarn create @rancher/app rancher-extensions-samples
cd rancher-extensions-samples
rm .vscode/settings.json

Look at existing extensions

• kubewarden/ui
• rancher/elemental-ui
• rancher/ui-plugin-examples

Run locally

Start a Rancher instance:

docker run --name local_rancher --privileged -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 3001:443 -p 3000:80 rancher/rancher:v2.7-head
docker logs local_rancher  2>&1 | grep "Bootstrap Password:"

Open the local Rancher instance on localhost:3001 in a browser and enabled Extensions from the Configuration sub-menu.

Run a local environment:

yarn install
API=https://localhost:3001 yarn dev

Open the instance in a browser (the link is displayed in previous command output)

Clean-up:

docker stop local_rancher
docker rm local_rancher

Troubleshoot issues

yarn must be installed, if not run:

npm install -g yarn

By default, yarn install won't work on recent Node.js version (for exemple in March 2023, expected version if 16, doesn't work Node.JS 19, see releases), in that case run:

yarn install --ignore-engines
# (optional) shows why a package is required
yarn why @achrinza/node-ipc