Getting Started with Flame

Start a local Flame cluster, verify it with flmping, and run your first Python service.

Getting Started with Flame

This guide follows the current Flame quick start: Docker Compose for the first local cluster, then flmadm for local source or systemd-based installs.

Prerequisites

  • Docker Compose for the quickest path.
  • Rust, Git, Python, and uv if you build and install from source with flmadm.

Option 1: Docker Compose

Clone Flame and start the local cluster:

git clone https://github.com/xflops/flame.git
cd flame
docker compose up -d

Open a shell in the console container:

docker compose exec flame-console /bin/bash

Verify the cluster:

flmping
flmctl list --session
flmctl list --application

The built-in applications should include flmping, flmexec, and flmrun.

Option 2: Local flmadm Install

From a Flame source checkout:

cargo build --release -p flmadm
sudo install -m 755 target/release/flmadm /usr/local/bin/
sudo flmadm install --all --src-dir . --enable
source /usr/local/flame/sbin/flmenv.sh

For more installation profiles and multi-node layouts, see the Installation Guide.

Client Configuration

Python clients can use environment variables:

export FLAME_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:8080
export FLAME_CACHE_ENDPOINT=grpc://127.0.0.1:9090

Flame clients can also read ~/.flame/flame.yaml:

---
current-context: flame
contexts:
  - name: flame
    cluster:
      endpoint: "http://127.0.0.1:8080"
    cache:
      endpoint: "grpc://127.0.0.1:9090"
    package:
      excludes:
        - "*.log"
        - "*.pkl"
        - "*.tmp"

These plaintext endpoints are for local development. Configure TLS for deployments that require encrypted, authenticated connections.

When package.storage is absent, App uploads packages to the Flame object cache through cache.endpoint.

First Python Service

Install the SDK from the Flame checkout you intend to use, configure the endpoints above, and verify that the built-in flmrun application is registered. For example, from the Flame checkout:

python -m pip install -e ./sdk/python

App packages the current working directory, so create a separate project directory for this example and run it from there.

Create hello_app.py:

import flamepy.app as app

app.init("hello-app")


@app.service()
def hello(name: str) -> str:
    return f"hello, {name}"


try:
    print(hello.remote("flame").get())
finally:
    app.destroy()

python hello_app.py

Next Steps