Installing GoCD agent on Mac OS X

• Installation
• Overriding default startup arguments and environment
• Location of GoCD agent files
• Setting the server location without the GUI
• Registering your agent with the server

Installation

1. Double-click the file downloaded from the downloads page to unzip the contents.
2. Drag the Go Agent.app icon to the Applications folder.
3. Double-click on the Go Agent.app icon to open the launcher.

4. The very first time you run the GoCD agent on your machine you will be prompted for the hostname or IP address of your GoCD server. By default it will try connecting to the local machine. Click the OK button to continue.

   

Overriding default startup arguments and environment

You can override default environment variables by:

1. Overriding them during startup when starting from the terminal

    PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin open /Applications/Go\ Agent.app
   

2. Overriding them using a file ~/Library/Application Support/Go Agent/overrides.env. This file is sourced during agent startup, and it can be setup to change environment variables.

    PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
   

Location of GoCD agent files

The GoCD agent installs its files in the following locations on your filesystem:

/Applications/Go Agent.app                                                  # The go agent application
~/Library/Preferences/com.thoughtworks.go.agent.properties                  # The agent properties (host and port are saved here)
~/Library/Application Support/Go Agent                                      # The agent directory

You can find logs in ~/Library/Application Support/Go Agent. The osx-app.log file contains the info used to bootstrap the agent jar.

Setting the server location without the GUI

You can specify the server location in the GUI, but you can also modify the properties file itself (when the Go agent app is not running). This allows you to set a custom port number, which is not possible in the GUI (be aware that this might not always work as you expect). The properties file is located in ~/Library/Preferences/com.thoughtworks.go.agent.properties, and has a serverUrl and a sslVerificationMode property.

Registering your agent with the server

For security reasons, all newly installed Go agents need to be enabled on the Go server before work is assigned to them. This prevents an unauthorized person from getting access to your source code. To enable a newly installed Go agent, do the following:

1. Open the Go server dashboard
2. Follow the instructions here to find the agent you've just installed on the list and add the agent to your cloud. The Go server will now schedule work for this agent.