mastodon/SETUP.md

Setting up a dev environment

Assumptions

You have a package manager, and your system is systemd-based.

Prerequisites

Nodejs

Install nodejs via your package manager. We used v19.1.0 for this setup.

Ruby

Install ruby via your package manager of choice.

Ruby Extras

Your distro may package bundle and irb in separate packages (Arch does). If they are, install them too. On Arch these are ruby-bundler and ruby-irb.

PostGreSQL

Install postgres via your package manager.

Redis

Install redis via your package manager.

Enable and start the default redis.service

Setting up the Environment

In the following instructions, replace USER with your *nix user name.

1. Add yourself to the postgres group with sudo usermod -a -G postgres USER. You'll need to log out and back in to update your groups.
2. Run sudo mkdir /run/postgresql to create said folder if it doesn't exist.
3. Run sudo chown postgres:postgres /run/postgresql to change the owner to postgres.
4. Run sudo chmod g+w /run/postgresql to allow postgres group members to write to the folder.
5. Navigate to the root of this repo.
6. Set up a local DB cluster with pg_ctl -D data/postgres15 initdb -o '-U mastodon --auth-host=trust'.
7. Run it with pg_ctl -D data/postgres15 start.
8. Run bundle config set --local path 'vendor/bundle. This will store the all the ruby gems locally so that we can avoid interfering with system config.
9. Run bundle install.
10. Run yarn install.
11. Run export $(grep -v '^#' .env.dev | xargs) to source in our dev vars. You may want to alias this.
12. Run bundle exec rake db:setup. If this fails, you can use bundle exec rake db:reset to forcibly regenerate it.

Running Mastodon

1. To make our lives easier, we'll use foreman to run the site, so use gem install foreman.
2. Run export RAILS_ENV=development and export NODE_ENV=development. a. Put these in your shell's .rc, or a script you can source if you want to skip this step in the future.
3. Run bundle exec rake assets:precompile. a. If this explodes, complaining about Hash, you'll need to export NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider. Same deal as the above. b. After doing this, you will need to bundle exec rake assets:clobber and then re-run bundle exec rake assets:precompile.
4. Run foreman start

Updates/Troubleshooting

RubyVM/DebugInspector Issues

Still unable to fix. Circumvent by removing better_errors and binding_of_caller from Gemfile. Happy to troubleshoot with someone better with Ruby than us >_<'/.

Webpack Issues

If Webpack compalins about being unable to find some assets or locales:

1. yarn add webpack
2. git restore package.json yarn.lock
3. yarn install

Then re-run foreman. No. We have no idea why this worked.

If the above instructions don't work, please contact @Rin here, or @tammy@social.treehouse.systems.