Administering buildpacks in IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry

Depending on how you configured IBM® Cloud Private, the buildpacks that are contained in IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry might require update management, deletion of deprecated buildpacks, and other maintenance.

Buildpack maintenance and lifecycle

As the owner, you can choose how you want to order and arrange your buildpacks. Each buildpack version requires memory and as you update your buildpacks, you need to delete unused or deprecated buildpacks from your environment.

To learn more about the buildpack lifecycle, including creating, updating, and deleting buildpacks in IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry, see the Cloud Foundry buildpacks External link icon resources.

Tip: If you have a consistent naming system that you use for all of your buildpacks, it helps you track the versions that you install. If you need support for your buildpacks, you can help with diagnosing and fixing any problems by having a naming system that includes the language and version of your buildpacks. You can choose to have the language and version in the buildpack name itself or in the file name of the buildpack.

Installing buildpacks and buildpack updates

Each release of IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry contains IBM buildpacks. When you update IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry periodically, any updates to the Cloud Foundry components also include updates to the buildpacks. After you install IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry, or each time you make updates to Cloud Foundry, new buildpacks can be installed.

See Installing IBM Cloud Private Cloud Foundry to learn more about installing Cloud Foundry.

Removing buildpacks

Since buildpacks are not automatically deleted, you decide when to remove buildpacks. You must periodically remove buildpacks so that Cloud Foundry does not run out of memory space.

Remove buildpacks with the following steps:

From the Cloud Foundry CLI, list the buildpacks.
```
cf buildpacks
```
Select which buildpack to remove, and then use the following command to remove a buildpack.
```
cf delete-buildpack <buildpack_name>
```

Buildpacks in offline mode

Both the Liberty for Java™ and Node.js buildpacks can access sites and download artifacts from sources that are external to the cloud environment where they operate. To learn more about whitelisting sites, see Offline mode for Liberty External link icon in IBM Cloud Dedicated, Bluemix Local, and IBM Cloud Private environments. Also, for more information about running Node.js applications locally, you can explore Working offline with Node.js .