How to - Sharing a data image

Working with a consistent dataset is important when in a team environment, but can cause issues when the data size grows. Sharing a data image with Spawn allows all members of your team to be able to quickly create data containers, all getting the same starting point but being isolated from each others changes. You can also share data images created using the graduate command, allowing you to share changes you've made to your data container such as recreating a bug.

Spawn is currently in beta. Apply for the beta programme to get access.

This is part of a series of short guides for getting up and running quickly with Spawn.

Sharing with teams

Sharing data images with Spawn is built on top of GitHub groups, allowing you to share a data image with any group that you are a member of, giving access to all its members.

GitHub groups are in the format of organization:groupname

You can share a data image both during and after creating the image, we'll cover both below.

During image creation

When creating an image, we can share it with teams at the same time by adding them to the image definition file.

1. Create a file developmentshared.yaml with your data image specifications.

sourceType: empty
name: devshared
engine: postgresql
teams:
  - "myorg:team1"
  - "myorg:team2"

1. Run the create data-image command to create and share the data-image.

spawnctl create data-image -f ./developmentshared.yaml

After image creation

Share an existing data image using the update command.

spawnctl update data-image dev --team myorg:team2 --team myorg:team3

Identifying shared data images

When viewing data images, any images which have been shared will have values in the Teams column.

spawnctl get data-images

ID                  Name                      Tags                     Engine              Status                 CreatedAt           Teams
00001               dev                                                PostgreSQL          Completed              1 day ago           myorg:team2, myorg:team3
00002               devshared                                          PostgreSQL          Completed              2 minutes ago       myorg:team1, myorg:team2

Using your data image

Now you have a data image available and shared with team members, you can all create data containers and have access to the same data, in your own isolated environments.