Binary Buildpack

Page last updated: August 20, 2015

Use the binary buildpack for running arbitrary binary web servers.

For more information, see the buildpack documentation.

Usage

Unlike most other Cloud Foundry buildpacks, you must specify the binary buildpack in order to use it in staging your binary file. On a command line, use cf push APP-NAME with the -b option to specify the buildpack.

For example:

$ cf push my_app -b https://github.com/cloudfoundry/binary-buildpack.git

You can provide Cloud Foundry with the shell command to execute your binary in the following two ways:

Procfile: In the root directory of your app, add a Procfile that specifies a web task:
```
web: ./app
```

Command line: Use cf push APP-NAME with the -c option:

$ cf push my_app -c './app' -b binary-buildpack

Compiling your Binary

Cloud Foundry expects your binary to bind to the port specified by the PORT environment variable.

The following example in Go binds a binary to the PORT environment variable:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
    "os"
)

func handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    fmt.Fprintf(w, "Hello, %s", "world!")
}

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", handler)
    http.ListenAndServe(":"+os.Getenv("PORT"), nil)
}

Your binary should run without any additional runtime dependencies on the cflinuxfs2 or lucid64 root filesystem (rootfs). Any such dependencies should be statically linked to the binary.

To boot a docker container running the cflinuxfs2 filesystem, run the following command:

$ docker run -it cloudfoundry/cflinuxfs2 bash

To boot a docker container running the lucid64 filesystem, run the following command:

$ docker run -it cloudfoundry/lucid64 bash

To compile the above Go application on the rootfs, golang must be installed. apt-get install golang and go build app.go will produce an app binary.

When deploying your binary to Cloud Foundry, use cf push with the -s option to specify the root filesystem it should run against.

$ cf push my_app -s (cflinuxfs2|lucid64)

To run docker on Mac OS X, we recommend boot2docker.