Overview of Tanzu Accelerator CLI

The Tanzu Accelerator Tanzu CLI includes commands for developers and operators to create and use accelerators.

Server API connections for operators and developers

The Tanzu Accelerator CLI must connect to a server for all provided commands except for the help and version commands.

Operators typically use create, update, and delete commands for managing accelerators in a Kubernetes context. They also use the fragment commands to manage accelerator fragments. These commands require a Kubernetes context where the operator is already authenticated and is authorized to create and edit the accelerator resources. Operators can also use the get and list commands by using the same authentication. For any of these commands, the operator can specify the --context flag to access accelerators in a specific Kubernetes context.

Developers use the list, get, and generate commands for using accelerators available in an Application Accelerator server. Developers use the --server-url to point to the Application Accelerator server they want to use.

You can either use the proxy that is part of TAP-GUI or you can use the URL for the Application Accelerator server, if that is configured to be exposed. VMware recommends using the TAP-GUI address.

Using TAP-GUI URL

Specify --server-url as:
```
https://tap-gui.DOMAIN
```
Where DOMAIN defaults to the shared.ingress_domain value provided in the Tanzu Application Platform values file.
Add the following flags to the tap-values.yaml file when shared.ingress_domain is set.
```
accelerator:
  ingress:
    include: true
```

Using Application Accelerator Server URL

If you cannot use the TAP-GUI URL, the fallback is to use Application Accelerator server directly. In this case the URL depends on the configuration settings for Application Accelerator:

For installations configured with a shared ingress and where the Application Accelerator server is configured to use the ingress, use https://accelerator.<domain> where domain defaults to the shared.ingress_domain value provided in the values file of Tanzu Application Platform.
For installations using a LoadBalancer, look up the External IP address by using:
```
kubectl get -n accelerator-system service/acc-server
```
Use http://<External-IP> as the URL.
For any other configuration, you can use port forwarding by using:
```
kubectl port-forward service/acc-server -n accelerator-system 8877:80
```
Use http://localhost:8877 as the URL.

Using “ACC_SERVER_URL” environment variable

The developer can set an ACC_SERVER_URL environment variable to avoid having to provide the same --server-url flag for every command. Run export ACC_SERVER_URL=<URL> for the terminal session in use. If the developer explicitly specifies the --server-url flag, it overrides the ACC_SERVER_URL environment variable if it is set.

Installation

For information about installing the Tanzu CLI Accelerator plug-in, see Install Accelerator CLI plug-in.

Command reference

For information about available commands, see the Tanzu CLI Command Reference documentation.