An independent guide to building modern software for serverless and native cloud

Setting up your Windows Workstation

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Here's the checklist of tools you need to have installed and configured, if you want to work with the sample code on this site with a Windows workstation:

Prerequisites

Please note that before starting here, you need to have previously run through the AWS and Github account setup checklists. These checklists will have left you with two sets of credentials on hand, ready to use:

  • AWS access keys
  • Github username and personal access token

Installing PowerShell

If you don’t already have it installed, you can find links to download the latest version of PowerShell from here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell

Installing and Configuring the AWS PowerShell Module

Once PowerShell is installed, run it as administrator and install the AWS PowerShell module using these commands:

Install-Module -name AWSPowerShell.NetCore
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Then, set your AWS credentials, using values obtained from the “Setting up an AWS Account” checklist:

Import-Module AWSPowerShell.NetCore
Set-AWSCredential -AccessKey {your access key} ` 
  -SecretKey {your secret key}`
  -StoreAs default

Lastly, set your default region with this command:

Initialize-AWSDefaults

Installing the .Net SDK and AWS Lambda Tools

If you intend to work with .Net variants of sample code for this site, then you’ll need to follow these next steps.

First, download and install the latest version of the .Net SDK if you don’t have it already:

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download

Then install the AWS Lambda Tools extension with this command:

dotnet tool install -g Amazon.Lambda.Tools

Configuring NuGet

Run this command to add the Github packages as an authenticated NuGet source. Be sure you substitute your personal access token value:

dotnet nuget add source --username USERNAME `
  --password {your personal access token} `
  --store-password-in-clear-text `
  --name github "https://nuget.pkg.github.com/johngrantham/index.json"

Installing the Java JDK

If you intend to work with Java variants of sample code for this site, then you will need to have the JDK installed on your workstation. You can find the download for the latest JDK on the Oracle site:

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/

Note that if you don’t have one, you may need to create an Oracle account to download the JDK.

Installing GIT and Maven

Next, download Git and Maven from these sources:

Tool URL
Git https://git-scm.com/download/win
Maven https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi

Maven doesn’t have an installer, so you can just extract the contents of the zip file to a folder of your choice. Be sure to then add this path to your PATH environment variable.

Configuring GIT

Lastly, run these two commands to configure GIT, setting appropriate values for your name and email:

git config --global user.name {your name}
git config --global user.email {your email}

Configuring Maven

As with the NuGet configuration performed above, you need to configure Maven with credentials so that it can access the Github packages. First, run the maven command to initialize the repositories directory. You can ignore the error messages that this command generates when run without any arguments:

mvn

You should now see an “.m2” folder in your home directory.

Next, take the XML shown below, substitute your Github username and personal access token values, and save it with the file name “settings.xml” in the ~/.m2 folder:

<settings>
  <servers>
    <server>
      <id>github</id>
      <username>{your github username}</username>
      <password>{your github personal access token}</password>
    </server>
  </servers>
</settings>

Installing VS Code

If you don’t already have VS Code on your workstation, you can download it from here:

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

Installing Postman and Postman Canary

The sample code for this site frequently includes API test collections for Postman, which you can download from here:

https://www.postman.com/downloads/

There are also some performance testing features that are only available in Postman Canary, which is an early release version of Postman. These features are used in some of the courses for this site.

You can download this version of Postman from here:

https://www.postman.com/downloads/canary/