Before giving you the whirlwind tour of the WKT UI application, it is important to know that the application is a native, desktop application. It uses native operating system features, such as:
.wktproj extension and associates itself
with that extension. For example, this lets you double-click on the file in the native file browser and
have the application start and open the selected project..wktproj files, the application adds those files to the OS-maintained
list of recently used files. This causes these files to show up in OS-specific locations to provide shortcuts for
opening the file with the application. For example, on macOS, right-clicking on the application icon in the dock will
display the recently used .wktproj files and selecting one will open an application window and load the contents
of the .wktproj file.What is a .wktproj file? Simply put, it is the application’s equivalent of an Integrated Development Environment
(IDE) project file. It stores:
There are two ways to create a new project:
File > New Project and select the file location and name.Note that the file extension for project files must be .wktproj. Otherwise, the application will not recognize the
file as a project and will not allow it to be opened as a project file.
The WKT UI application uses a one project per window paradigm and most everything you do in the window is affected by the project data, either stored directly in the project file or in the WDT model-related files referenced by the project. However, there are a few exceptions that are covered in Settings Outside the WKT Project File.
Multiple factors influence the behavior of the WKT UI application in a particular environment. Other than the WKT Project file, those include:
Some of the application’s behavior is influenced by environment variables it inherits when it is started. Environment variables affect the behavior of the WKT UI application when computing default values for application form fields. Some examples are:
PATH - Used to locate executables like docker, helm, and kubectl.JAVA_HOME - Used as one way to find the directory where the Java Development Kit (JDK) is installed.ORACLE_HOME and MW_HOME - Used to find the Oracle Fusion Middleware installation directory.On Windows and Linux platforms, this tends to be the user’s environment that they have configured to be used when
they log in. On macOS, native applications do not inherit the user’s login environment. Instead, the application
inherits the environment configured by the launchd daemon process. If you are running on macOS, then you should keep this in mind
when the application doesn’t behave as you expect. For more information, see Project Settings.
The Preferences menu lets you configure settings that affect the behavior of the WKT UI application for the user
across all instances of the application on the machine. These user-visible settings include the following categories:
Settings are also used to store internally used values that impact the appearance of the application. For example, the Window size is stored so that the application will open the window with your last known window size. The list of such appearance-related settings will likely grow over time.
If the WKT UI application is to be run from an environment where a proxy server is required to access the Internet, then you
must configure the proxy server settings to allow Internet access. Currently, the UI depends on access to
github.com to access release information and download new releases of the WKT tools and the UI itself. This connectivity
is used in various places to determine default values for input data (for example, the default image tag to use for installing the
WebLogic Kubernetes Operator) and providing updated features for the WKT tools bundled with the application, as
well as updating the WKT UI application itself when a new release becomes available. Depending on the project configuration,
the application may also require access to other sites, such as Docker Hub and other container registries, Helm chart
download sites, and cloud-provider sites for authenticating to and accessing remote Kubernetes clusters.
To configure the proxy environment, use the Preferences menu to add or update the
following fields, as needed:
HTTPS Proxy URL - The full URL to the proxy server (for example, http://my-proxy-server.mycompany.com:80).Bypass Proxy Hosts - The comma-separated list of DNS or IP patterns that should not go through the proxy.
For example, a value of .us.mycompany.com,.emea.mycompany.com,.apac.mycompany.com will skip the proxy for any
DNS name that ends in one of the three domain names.Using this section, you can configure the logging output level and control the log file directory. The defaults are:
File Transport Log Level - The logging level below which log messages will be discarded. For example, Debug messages
will be discarded if the level is set to Info. The default value is Info.Log File Directory - The directory to which log files are written. The default is the user’s temporary directory, as
defined by the operating system.This setting lets you turn on or off the in-application introductory information being displayed at startup. Show Introduction is always
accessible from the Help menu.
The WKT UI application depends on several external applications for its functionality. As such, it is important to install and configure these external applications properly on the local machine on which the application is running.
docker (or podman) - Used to create new images and inspect the contents of
custom base images. The WebLogic Image Tool depends on docker (or podman) for this functionality. docker
(or podman) is also used to log in to and interact with image registries.kubectl - Used to get, create, and update configuration objects in your Kubernetes cluster.
It is critical that the kubectl configuration file is properly set up to allow kubectl to authenticate to the cluster.helm - Used to install the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator and ingress controllers.openssl - Used to generate X.509 TLS certificates, should you ask the application to
generate one for your ingress route(s), only if you ask the application to generate it for you.WebLogic Deploy Tooling (WDT) and WebLogic Image Tool (WIT) are bundled with the WKT UI application. These tools are:
Use Help > Check For Updates periodically to make sure you are using the latest versions of these
bundled tools.