Add offline flag to chectl server:start

Is your enhancement related to a problem? Please describe.

We are making some changes to make it possible to run Che offline. But there is not chectl “offline” flag to automatically set this up.

Describe the solution you’d like

Add flag --offline to the chectl server:start that should:

• pull all images locally
• set imagePullPolicy to Never

The deployment of Che should not be blocked while downloading the images: deployment and image pulling should happen in parallel.

If Che is already deployed the command should pull all the images and change the image pull policies (if needed).

Additional context

The images that need to be pulled are the default images for the given version of chectl (e.g. nightly/latest/7.x.y):

• che server
• keycloak, postgres and jwt-proxy (if multi-user mode)
• plugin registry (offline version)
• devfile registry
• plugins sidecars
• plugin broker
• devfile registry stacks images

Subtasks

• ImagePullPolicy should be configurable for every container https://github.com/eclipse/che/issues/14698
• Create a job to download images into cluster nodes for offline mode https://github.com/eclipse/che/issues/16221
• Deploying offline devfile and plugin registries
• Deploy Eclipse Che and set imagePullPolicy
• Test on minikube/minishift
• Write documentation

Minor tasks

• Add github action to push image-copier to quay.io automatically
• Sometimes skopeo failed to copy images with timeout i/o error

[nickboldt]

get very large due to old versions

Well, you could delete the old stuff from time to time. Why are we hoarding old versions we don’t support?

[tolusha]

@amisevsk I need offline versions of devfile and plugin registries. I am wondering If it make sense to build and push to quay.io them along with theirs online version?