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Developer Lounge

The FAS-IT Developer Lounge focuses on equipping developers with the knowledge they need to streamline and optimize their development lifecycles while they build secure IT solutions within the GSA Cloud Ecosystem, as supported by FAS Cloud Services (FCS). Enabling a positive experience for developers helps FAS-IT to achieve full utility for the various applications and desired outcomes for all users.


developer lounge resources

Developer Lounge Resources

Find useful tools and information to help you develop here at GSA-IT.

FAST VDI

FAST VDI stands for the FAS Toolset (FAST). The FAST Toolset is a readily available set of comprehensive developer, infrastructure and data software tools deployed in the GSA IT VDI (Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).

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Service Catalog for Developers

The Service Catalog for Developers is designed to be a comprehensive resource and reference for developers, technical architects, and data architects. This resource will provide information about consumable services such as APIs and Web Services.

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Approved List of Software

The official GSA resource for enterprise IT information is called the GSA EA Analytics & Reporting (GEAR) application. GEAR is responsible for maintaining the GSA Business Application Inventory, publishing the FISMA System inventory, is the official Enterprise Architecture repository, and hosts the official IT Standards List. FAS-IT is compliant with enterprise-wide technology approval processes and it participates in the upkeep and maintenance of it.

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Developer Experience Principles

GSA IT recommends and strongly encourages adoption of the eight Developer Experience principles described below to drive consistency across the enterprise.

  1. Define all Infrastructure as Code
    • Cloud infrastructure must be defined as Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
    • IaC must live in a version-controlled repository
    • IaC should be developed modularly with sensitive configuration data being extracted to variables
    • IaC components must be maintained and updated throughout its effective lifetime
  2. All changes to production should be tested in lower level
    • Production changes must be tested in a lower environment. If this is not feasible, changes must have a rollback plan
  3. Version Controlled Assets
    • Code, documentation and resulting binary assets must be version-controlled and appropriately signed or tagged to uniquely identify the asset
  4. Configuration Data Storage
    • Mutable configuration data must be stored and consumed programmatically using an appropriate software, service or technology
  5. Implement Automated Configuration Management
    • Product teams must implement Automated Configuration Management on deployed mutable instances (e.g. packages, daemons, agents, applications)
    • Changes to running mutable instances must be performed through idempotent automation and not human intervention
    • Automated Configuration Management components must be maintained in the version control system
    • Automated Configuration Management must be incorporated into the FISMA System Continuity of Operations Plan
  6. Implement DocOpst
    • Product teams must implement Automated Configuration Management on deployed mutable instances (e.g. packages, daemons, agents, applications)
    • Changes to running mutable instances must be performed through idempotent automation and not human intervention
    • Automated Configuration Management components must be maintained in the version control system
    • Automated Configuration Management must be incorporated into the FISMA System Continuity of Operations Plan