Installing the opm CLI

Installing the opm CLI

About the opm CLI

The opm CLI tool is provided by the Operator Framework for use with the Operator bundle format. This tool allows you to create and maintain catalogs of Operators from a list of Operator bundles that are similar to software repositories. The result is a container image which can be stored in a container registry and then installed on a cluster.

A catalog contains a database of pointers to Operator manifest content that can be queried through an included API that is served when the container image is run. On OKD, Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) can reference the image in a catalog source, defined by a CatalogSource object, which polls the image at regular intervals to enable frequent updates to installed Operators on the cluster.

Additional resources

See Operator Framework packaging format for more information about the bundle format.
To create a bundle image using the Operator SDK, see Working with bundle images.

Installing the opm CLI

You can install the opm CLI tool on your Linux, macOS, or Windows workstation.

Prerequisites

For Linux, you must provide the following packages. RHEL 8 meets these requirements:
- podman version 1.9.3+ (version 2.0+ recommended)
- glibc version 2.28+

Procedure

Navigate to the OpenShift mirror site and download the latest version of the tarball that matches your operating system.
Unpack the archive.
- For Linux or macOS:
```
$ tar xvf <file>
```
- For Windows, unzip the archive with a ZIP program.
Place the file anywhere in your PATH.
- For Linux or macOS:
  1. Check your PATH:
```
$ echo $PATH
```
  2. Move the file. For example:
```
$ sudo mv ./opm /usr/local/bin/
```
- For Windows:
  1. Check your PATH:
```
C:\> path
```
  2. Move the file:
```
C:\> move opm.exe <directory>
```

Verification

After you install the opm CLI, verify that it is available:
```
$ opm version
```

Additional resources

See Managing custom catalogs for opm procedures including creating, updating, and pruning catalogs.