Development

You can use a fully functional local version to develop and test both frontend and backend. It requires at least 2GB RAM or swap enabled.

To bring it up run:

# if you mainly work on backend
cp compose-dev-backend.yml compose-private.yml
# if you mainly work on frontend
cp compose-dev-frontend.yml compose-private.yml
# now, edit / debug `compose-private.yml` to your heart's content

# build and run
docker-compose -f compose-private.yml build
docker-compose -f compose-private.yml up

It starts Remark42 on 127.0.0.1:8080 and adds local OAuth2 provider "Dev". To access the UI demo page go to 127.0.0.1:8080/web. By default, you would be logged in as dev_user which is defined as admin. You can tweak any of supported parameters in corresponded yml file.

Backend Docker Compose config by default skips running frontend related tests. Frontend Docker Compose config by default skips running backend related tests and sets NODE_ENV=development for frontend build.

Backend development

To run backend locally (development mode, without Docker) you have to have the latest stable go toolchain installed.

To run backend - cd backend; go run app/main.go server --dbg --secret=12345 --url=http://127.0.0.1:8080 --admin-passwd=password --site=remark. It stars backend service with embedded bolt store on port 8080 with basic auth, allowing to authenticate and run requests directly, like this:

HTTP http://admin:password@127.0.0.1:8080/api/v1/find?site=remark&sort=-active&format=tree&url=http://127.0.0.1:8080

Frontend development

Frontend development guide can be found here.

Build

You should have at least 2GB RAM or swap enabled for building.

• install Node.js 12.11 or higher
• install NPM 6.13.4
• run npm install inside ./frontend
• run npm run build there
• result files will be saved in ./frontend/public

Note: Running npm install will set up pre-commit hooks into your git repository. It used to reformat your frontend code using prettier and lint with eslint and stylelint before every commit.

Development server

For local development mode with Hot Reloading use npm start instead of npm run build. In this case, webpack will serve files using webpack-dev-server on localhost:9000. By visiting 127.0.0.1:9000/web you will get a page with the main comments widget communicating with a demo server backend running on https://demo.remark42.com. But you will not be able to log in with any OAuth providers due to security reasons.

You can attach to the locally running backend by providing REMARK_URL environment variable.

npx cross-env REMARK_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080 npm start

Note: If you want to redefine env variables such as PORT on your local instance you can add .env file to ./frontend folder and rewrite variables as you wish. For such functional, we use dotenv.

The best way to start a local developer environment:

cp compose-dev-frontend.yml compose-private-frontend.yml
docker-compose -f compose-private-frontend.yml up --build
cd frontend
npm run dev

Developer build running by webpack-dev-server supports devtools for React and
Redux.