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Commands

This page lists all commands provided by the Backstage CLI, what they're for, and where to use them.

The documentation for each command begins with specifying its scope, this indicates where the command should be used by selecting from the following list:

• app - A frontend app package, such as packages/app.
• backend - A backend package, such as packages/backend.
• frontend-plugin - A frontend plugin package.
• backend-plugin - A backend plugin package.
• root - The monorepo root.
• any - Any kind of package, but not the repo root.

help

This command displays a help summary or detailed help screens for each command. Below is a cleaned up output of yarn backstage-cli --help.

app:build                Build an app for a production release
app:serve                Serve an app for local development

backend:build            Build a backend plugin
backend:bundle           Bundle the backend into a deployment archive
backend:build-image      Bundles the package into a docker image
backend:dev              Start local development server with HMR for the backend

plugin:build             Build a plugin
plugin:diff              Diff an existing plugin with the creation template
plugin:serve             Serves the dev/ folder of a plugin

build                    Build a package for publishing
build-workspace          Builds a temporary dist workspace from the provided packages
lint                     Lint a package
test                     Run tests, forwarding args to Jest, defaulting to watch mode
clean                    Delete cache directories

create-plugin            Creates a new plugin in the current repository
remove-plugin            Removes plugin in the current repository

config:docs              Browse the configuration reference documentation
config:print             Print the app configuration for the current package
config:check             Validate that the given configuration loads and matches schema
config:schema            Dump the app configuration schema

versions:bump            Bump Backstage packages to the latest versions
versions:check           Check Backstage package versioning

prepack                  Prepares a package for packaging before publishing
postpack                 Restores the changes made by the prepack command

create-github-app        Create new GitHub App in your organization (experimental)

help [command]           display help for command

app:build

Scope: app

Builds a bundle of static content from the app, which can then be served via any static web server such as nginx, or via the app-backend plugin directly from a Backstage backend instance.

The command also reads and injects static configuration into the bundle. It is important to note that when deploying using your own static content hosting solution, this will be the final configuration used in the frontend unless you for example hook in configuration loading from the backend. When using the nginx based Dockerfile in this repo along with its included run script, APP_CONFIG_ environment variables will be injected into the frontend, and when serving using the app-backend plugin, the configuration is completely injected from the backend and the configuration at the time of calling this command will not be used.

Note that even when injecting configuration at runtime, it is not possible to change the base path of the app. For example, if you at build time have app.baseUrl set to http://dev-app.com/my-app, you can change that to https://prod-app.com/my-app, but not to https://prod-app.com, as that would change the path.

During the build, the following variables are set:

process.env.NODE_ENV = 'production';
process.env.BUILD_INFO = {
  cliVersion: '0.4.0', // The version of the CLI package
  gitVersion: 'v0.4.0-86-ge54815618', // output of `git describe --always`
  packageVersion: '1.0.5', // The version of the app package itself
  timestamp: 1678900000000, // Date.now() when the build started
  commit: 'e548156182a973ed4b459e18533afc22c85ffff8', // output of `git rev-parse HEAD`
};

Some CI environments do not properly report correct resource limits, potentially leading to errors such as ENOMEM during compilation. If you run into this issue you can limit the parallelization of the build process by setting the environment variable BACKSTAGE_CLI_BUILD_PARALLEL, which is forwarded to the terser-webpack-plugin. You can set it to false or 1 to completely disable parallelization, but usually a low value such as 2 is enough.

Usage: backstage-cli app:build

Options:
  --stats          Write bundle stats to output directory
  --lax            Do not require environment variables to be set
  --config <path>  Config files to load instead of app-config.yaml (default: [])
  -h, --help       display help for command

app:serve

Scope: app

Serve an app for local development. This starts up a local development server, using a bundling configuration that is quite similar to that of the app:build command, but with development features such as React Hot Module Replacement, faster sourcemaps, no minification, etc.

The static configuration is injected into the frontend, but it does not support watching, meaning that changes in for example app-config.yaml are not reflected until the serve process is restarted.

During the build, the following variables are set:

process.env.NODE_ENV = 'development';
process.env.BUILD_INFO = { /* See app:build */ };

The server listening configuration is controlled through the static configuration. The app.baseUrl determines the listening host and port, as well as whether HTTPS is used or not. It is also possible to override the listening host and port if needed by setting app.listen.host and app.listen.port.

Usage: backstage-cli app:serve [options]

Options:
  --check          Enable type checking and linting
  --config <path>  Config files to load instead of app-config.yaml (default: [])
  -h, --help       display help for command

backend:build

Scope: backend-plugin

This builds a backend package for publishing and use in production. The build output is written to dist/. Be sure to list any additional file that the package depends on at runtime in the "files" field inside package.json, a common example being the migrations directory.

Usage: backstage-cli backend:build [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

backend:bundle

Scope: backend

Bundle the backend and all of its local dependencies into a deployment archive. The archive is written to dist/bundle.tar.gz, and contains the packaged version of all dependencies of the target package, along with the target package itself. The layout of the packages in the archive is the same as the directory layout in the target monorepo, and the bundle also contains the root package.json and yarn.lock.

To use the bundle, extract it into a target directory, run yarn install --production, and then start the target backend package using for example node package/backend.

The dist/bundle.tar.gz is accompanied by a dist/skeleton.tar.gz, which has the same layout, but only contains package.json files and yarn.lock. This can be used to run a yarn install in environments that will benefit from the caching that this enables, such as Docker image builds. To use the skeleton archive, simply extract it first, run install, and then extract the main bundle.

The following is an example of a Dockerfile that can be used to package the output of backstage-cli backend:bundle into an image:

FROM node:14-buster-slim
WORKDIR /app

COPY yarn.lock package.json packages/backend/dist/skeleton.tar.gz ./
RUN tar xzf skeleton.tar.gz && rm skeleton.tar.gz

RUN yarn install --frozen-lockfile --production --network-timeout 300000 && rm -rf "$(yarn cache dir)"

COPY packages/backend/dist/bundle.tar.gz app-config.yaml ./
RUN tar xzf bundle.tar.gz && rm bundle.tar.gz

CMD ["node", "packages/backend"]

Usage: backstage-cli backend:bundle [options]

Bundle the backend into a deployment archive

Options:
  --build-dependencies  Build all local package dependencies before bundling the backend
  -h, --help            display help for command

backend:build-image

Scope: backend

Builds a Docker image of the backend package, forwarding all unknown options to docker image build. For example:

yarn backstage-cli backend:build-image --build --tag my-backend-image

The image is built using the backend package along with all of its local package dependencies. It expects to find a Dockerfile at the root of the backend package, which will be used during the build.

The Dockerfile is NOT executed within the package or repo itself. Because the packages in the repo itself are configured for development instead of production use, the final Docker build happens in a separate temporary directory, to which the backend package and dependencies have been copied. Only files listed within the "files" field within each package's package.json are copied over, along with the root package.json, yarn.lock, and any app-config.*.yaml files.

During the build a skeleton.tar file is created and put at the repo root. This file contains the package.json of each included package, which together with the root package.json and yarn.lock can be used to run a cached yarn install before the full production builds of all the packages are copied over, providing a significant speedup if Docker build layer caching available.

This command is experimental and we hope to be able to replace it with one that is less integrated directly with Docker, and also supports multi-stage Docker builds. It is possible to replicate most of what this command does by manually building each package, and then use the build-workspace to create the temporary workspace, and finally copy over any additional files to the workspace and execute the Docker build within it.

Usage: backstage-cli backend:build-image [options]

Options:
  --build                 Build packages before packing them into the image
  --backstage-cli-help    display help for command

backend:dev

Scope: backend, backend-plugin

Starts a backend package in development mode, with watch mode enabled for all local dependencies.

Usage: backstage-cli backend:dev [options]

Options:
  --check          Enable type checking and linting
  --inspect        Enable debugger
  --config <path>  Config files to load instead of app-config.yaml (default: [])
  -h, --help       display help for command

create-plugin

Scope: root

Creates a new plugin within the repository. This command is typically wrapped up in the root package.json to be executed with yarn create-plugin, using options that are appropriate for the organization that owns the app repo. A recommended scope for internal packages is @internal.

Usage: backstage-cli create-plugin [options]

Options:
  --backend             Create plugin with the backend dependencies as default
  --scope <scope>       npm scope
  --npm-registry <URL>  npm registry URL
  --no-private          Public npm package
  -h, --help            display help for command

remove-plugin

Scope: root

A utility to remove a plugin from a repo, essentially undoing everything that was done by create-plugin.

This is primarily intended as a utility for manual tests and end to end testing scripts.

Usage: backstage-cli remove-plugin [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

plugin:build

Scope: frontend-plugin

Build a frontend plugin for publishing to a package registry. There is no need to run this command during development or even in CI unless the package is being published. The app:bundle command does not use the output for this command when bundling local package dependencies.

The output is written to a dist/ folder. It also outputs type declarations for the plugin, and therefore requires yarn tsc to have been run first. The input type declarations are expected to be found within dist-types/ at the root of the monorepo.

Usage: backstage-cli plugin:build [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

plugin:serve

Scope: frontend-plugin

Serves a frontend plugin by itself for isolated development. The serve task itself is essentially identical to app:serve, but the entrypoint is instead set to the dev/ folder within the plugin.

The dev/ folder typically contains a small wrapper script that hooks up any necessary mock APIs or other things that are needed for the plugin to function. The @backstage/dev-utils package provides utilities to that end.

Usage: backstage-cli plugin:serve [options]

Options:
  --check          Enable type checking and linting
  --config <path>  Config files to load instead of app-config.yaml (default: [])
  -h, --help       display help for command

plugin:diff

Scope: frontend-plugin

Compares a frontend plugin to the create-plugin template, making sure that it hasn't diverged from the template and recommending updates when it has. A good practice is to run this command after updating the version of the CLI in a project.

Usage: backstage-cli plugin:diff [options]

Options:
  --check     Fail if changes are required
  --yes       Apply all changes
  -h, --help  display help for command

build

Scope: any

Build a single package for publishing, just like the plugin:build and backend:build commands. This command is intended for standalone packages that aren't plugins, and for example support building of isomorphic packages for usage in both the frontend and backend.

For frontend packages you'll want to include esm output, and for backend packages cjs. Whether to include types depends on if you need type declarations for the package, and also requires yarn tsc to have been run first.

Usage: backstage-cli build [options]

Options:
  --outputs <formats>  List of formats to output [types,cjs,esm]
  -h, --help           display help for command

lint

Scope: any

Lint a package. In addition to the default eslint behavior, this command will include TypeScript files, treat warnings as errors, and default to linting the entire directory if no specific files are listed.

Usage: backstage-cli lint [options]

Options:
  --format <format>  Lint report output format (default: "eslint-formatter-friendly")
  --fix              Attempt to automatically fix violations
  -h, --help         display help for command

test

Scope: any

Run tests, forwarding all unknown options to Jest, and defaulting to watch mode. When executing the tests, process.env.NODE_ENV will be set to "test".

This command uses a default Jest configuration that is included in the CLI, which is set up with similar goals for speed, scale, and working within a monorepo. The configuration sets the src as the root directory, enforces the .test. infix for tests, and uses src/setupTests.ts as the test setup location.

If needed, the configuration can be extended using a "jest" field in package.json, both within the target package and the monorepo root, with configuration in the target package taking precedence. Refer to the Jest configuration documentation for a full list of configuration options.

In addition to the Jest configuration there's an optional transformModules option, which is an array of module names to include in transformations. Normally modules inside node_modules are not transformed, but there are cases were published packages are not transpiled far enough to be usable by Jest, in which case you need to enable transform of them.

Another way to override the Jest configuration is to place a jest.config.js or jest.config.ts file in the package root. As opposed to the package.json way of overriding config, this completely removes the base config, and so you need to set it up from scratch.

Usage: backstage-cli test [options]

Options:
  --backstage-cli-help    display help for command

config:docs

Scope: root

This commands opens up the reference documentation of your apps local configuration schema in the browser. This is useful to get an overview of what configuration values are available to use, a description of what they do and their format, and where they get sent.

Usage: backstage-cli config:docs [options]

Browse the configuration reference documentation

Options:
  --package   Only include the schema that applies to the given package
  -h, --help        display help for command

config:print

Scope: root

Print the static configuration, defaulting to reading app-config.yaml in the repo root, using schema collected from all local packages in the repo.

For example, to validate that a given configuration value is visible in the frontend when building the my-app package, you can use the following:

yarn backstage-cli config:print --frontend --package my-app

Usage: backstage-cli config:print [options]

Options:
  --package <name>   Only load config schema that applies to the given package
  --lax              Do not require environment variables to be set
  --frontend         Print only the frontend configuration
  --with-secrets     Include secrets in the printed configuration
  --format <format>  Format to print the configuration in, either json or yaml [yaml]
  --config <path>    Config files to load instead of app-config.yaml (default: [])
  -h, --help         display help for command

config:check

Scope: root

Validate that static configuration loads and matches schema, defaulting to reading app-config.yaml in the repo root and using schema collected from all local packages in the repo.

Usage: backstage-cli config:check [options]

Options:
  --package <name>  Only load config schema that applies to the given package
  --lax                   Do not require environment variables to be set
  --config <path>   Config files to load instead of app-config.yaml (default: [])
  -h, --help        display help for command

config:schema

Scope: root

Dump the configuration schema that was collected from all local packages in the repo.

Note: when run by yarn, supply the yarn option --silent if you are using the output in a command line pipe to avoid non schema output in the pipeline.

Usage: backstage-cli config:schema [options]

Print configuration schema

Options:
  --package <name>   Only output config schema that applies to the given package
  --format <format>  Format to print the schema in, either json or yaml [yaml]
  -h, --help         display help for command

versions:bump

Scope: root

Bump all @backstage packages to the latest versions. This checks for updates in the package registry, and will update entries both in yarn.lock and package.json files when necessary.

Usage: backstage-cli versions:bump [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

versions:check

Scope: root

Validate @backstage dependencies within the repo, making sure that there are no duplicates of packages that might lead to breakages.

By supplying the --fix flag the command will attempt to fix any conflict that can be resolved by editing yarn.lock, but will not attempt to search for remote updates or modify any package.json files.

Usage: backstage-cli versions:check [options]

Options:
  --fix       Fix any auto-fixable versioning problems
  -h, --help  display help for command

prepack

Scope: any

This command should be added as scripts.prepack in all packages. It enables packaging- and publish-time overrides for fields inside packages.json.

The checked in version of all packages in a Backstage monorepo are tailored for local development, and as such main and similar fields inside package.json point to development source, i.e. src/index.ts. Using this when publishing would lead to a broken package, since src/ is not included in the published package and we instead need to point to files in the dist/ directory. This command allows for those fields to be rewritten when needed, and does so by copying all fields within publishConfig to the top-level of each package.json, skipping access, registry, and tag.

The need for this command may be removed in the future, as this exact method of overriding fields for publishing is already supported by some package managers.

Usage: backstage-cli prepack [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

postpack

Scope: any

This should be added as scripts.postpack in all packages. It restores package.json to what it looked like before calling the prepack command.

Usage: backstage-cli postpack [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

clean

Scope: any

Remove cache and output directories.

Usage: backstage-cli clean [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

build-workspace

Scope: any, root

Builds a mirror of the workspace using the packaged production version of each package. This essentially calls yarn pack in each included package and unpacks the resulting archive in the target workspace-dir.

Usage: backstage-cli build-workspace [options] <workspace-dir>

create-github-app

Scope: root

Creates a GitHub App in your GitHub organization. This is an alternative to token-based GitHub integration. See GitHub Apps for Backstage Authentication.

Launches a browser to create the App through GitHub and saves the result as a YAML file that can be referenced in the GitHub integration configuration.

Usage: backstage-cli create-github-app <github-org>