Solo CI Workflow

Overview

This guide walks you through integrating Solo into a GitHub Actions CI pipeline - covering runner requirements, tool installation, and automated network deployment. Each step installs dependencies directly in the workflow, since CI runners are fresh environments with no pre-installed tools.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have completed the following:

• System Readiness — your local environment meets all hardware and software requirements.
• Quickstart — you are familiar with the basic Solo workflow and the solo one-shot single deploy command.

This guide assumes you are integrating Solo into a GitHub Actions workflow where each runner is a fresh environment. The steps below install all required tools directly inside the workflow rather than relying on pre-installed dependencies.

Runner Requirements

Solo requires a minimum of 6 CPU cores and 12 GB of memory on the runner. If these requirements are not met, Solo components may hang or fail to install during deployment.

Note: The Kubernetes cluster does not have full access to all memory available on the host. Setting Docker to 12 GB of memory means the Kind cluster running inside Docker will have access to less than 12 GB. Memory and CPU utilisation also increase over time as transaction load grows. The requirements above are validated for solo one-shot single deploy as documented in this guide.

To verify that your runner meets these requirements, add the following step to your workflow:

  - name: Check Docker Resources
    run: |
      read cpus mem <<<"$(docker info --format '{{.NCPU}} {{.MemTotal}}')"
      mem_gb=$(awk -v m="$mem" 'BEGIN{printf "%.1f", m/1000000000}')
      echo "CPU cores: $cpus"
      echo "Memory: ${mem_gb} GB"

Expected Output:

  CPU cores: 6
  Memory: 12 GB

Step 1: Set Up Kind

Install Kind to create and manage a local Kubernetes cluster in your workflow.

  - name: Setup Kind
    uses: helm/kind-action@a1b0e391336a6ee6713a0583f8c6240d70863de3
    with:
      install_only: true
      node_image: kindest/node:v1.31.4@sha256:2cb39f7295fe7eafee0842b1052a599a4fb0f8bcf3f83d96c7f4864c357c6c30
      version: v0.26.0
      kubectl_version: v1.31.4
      verbosity: 3
      wait: 120s

Step 2: Install Node.js

  - name: Set up Node.js
    uses: actions/setup-node@49933ea5288caeca8642d1e84afbd3f7d6820020
    with:
      node-version: 22.12.0

Step 3: Install Solo CLI

Install the Solo CLI globally using npm.

Important: Always pin the CLI version. Unpinned installs may pick up breaking changes from newer releases and cause unexpected workflow failures.

  - name: Install Solo CLI
    run: |
      set -euo pipefail
      npm install -g @hashgraph/solo@0.48.0
      solo --version
      kind --version

Step 4: Deploy Solo

Deploy a Solo network to your Kind cluster. This command creates and configures a fully functional local Hiero network, including:

• Consensus Node

• Mirror Node

• Mirror Node Explorer

• JSON-RPC Relay

    - name: Deploy Solo
      env:
        SOLO_CLUSTER_NAME: solo
        SOLO_NAMESPACE: solo
        SOLO_CLUSTER_SETUP_NAMESPACE: solo-cluster
        SOLO_DEPLOYMENT: solo-deployment
      run: |
        set -euo pipefail
        kind create cluster -n "${SOLO_CLUSTER_NAME}"
        solo one-shot single deploy | tee solo-deploy.log
  

Complete Example Workflow

The following is the full workflow combining all steps above. Copy this into your .github/workflows/ directory as a starting point.

  - name: Check Docker Resources
    run: |
      read cpus mem <<<"$(docker info --format '{{.NCPU}} {{.MemTotal}}')"
      mem_gb=$(awk -v m="$mem" 'BEGIN{printf "%.1f", m/1000000000}')
      echo "CPU cores: $cpus"
      echo "Memory: ${mem_gb} GB"
      
  - name: Setup Kind
    uses: helm/kind-action@a1b0e391336a6ee6713a0583f8c6240d70863de3
    with:
      install_only: true
      node_image: kindest/node:v1.31.4@sha256:2cb39f7295fe7eafee0842b1052a599a4fb0f8bcf3f83d96c7f4864c357c6c30
      version: v0.26.0
      kubectl_version: v1.31.4
      verbosity: 3
      wait: 120s
         
  - name: Set up Node.js
    uses: actions/setup-node@49933ea5288caeca8642d1e84afbd3f7d6820020
    with:
      node-version: 22.12.0
      
  - name: Install Solo CLI
    run: |
      set -euo pipefail
      npm install -g @hashgraph/solo@0.48.0
      solo --version
      kind --version
      
  - name: Deploy Solo
    env:
      SOLO_CLUSTER_NAME: solo
      SOLO_NAMESPACE: solo
      SOLO_CLUSTER_SETUP_NAMESPACE: solo-cluster
      SOLO_DEPLOYMENT: solo-deployment
    run: |
      set -euo pipefail
      kind create cluster -n "${SOLO_CLUSTER_NAME}"
      solo one-shot single deploy | tee solo-deploy.log