Community

Community is a hybrid forum and mailing list server.

Dependencies

Ruby
OpenJDK 8 (newer versions don't work)
Leiningen
Node (for tests)
Postgres
Redis

Also, note that because Community is tied to the Recurse Center API, you'll need to be a Recurser to run this.

Installing dependencies on macOS

$ cd path/to/community

Ruby (using ruby-install and chruby)

For detailed setup instructions, see the chruby README.

$ brew install ruby-install chruby
$ echo "source $(brew --prefix chruby)/share/chruby/chruby.sh" >> ~/.zshrc
$ echo "source $(brew --prefix chruby)/share/chruby/auto.sh" >> ~/.zshrc
$ source $(brew --prefix chruby)/share/chruby/chruby.sh
$ source $(brew --prefix chruby)/share/chruby/auto.sh
$ ruby-install ruby-3.2.1
$ ruby -v
ruby 3.2.1 (2023-02-08 revision 31819e82c8) [arm64-darwin22]

Jenv and OpenJDK 8

$ brew install jenv
$ echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.jenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
$ echo 'eval "$(jenv init -)"' >> ~/.zshrc
$ eval "$(jenv init -)"
$ jenv prefix
jenv: version `1.8' is not installed

Download and install the latest version of the Eclipse Temurin build of OpenJDK 8.

Then tell jenv about it:

$ jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/temurin-8.jdk/Contents/Home

Leiningen

$ brew install leiningen
$ lein version
Leiningen 2.10.0 on Java 1.8.0_312 OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM

Node

$ brew install node yarn

Postgres

Install Postgres.app.

$ echo 'export PATH="/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
$ export PATH="/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin:$PATH"
$ which pg_config
/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin/pg_config

Redis

$ brew install redis
$ brew services
Name    Status  User  File
redis   started david ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.redis.plist

If redis isn't running, the following command will start it and set it to run on boot:

$ brew services start redis

Configuration

We use foreman which sets environment variables from a .env file. We don't check this into version control because it contains secret information. Here is a sample .env file to get you started:

PORT=5001
RACK_ENV=development
RAILS_LOG_TO_STDOUT=enabled
RACK_TIMEOUT_SERVICE_TIMEOUT=2592000
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379

# You can generate a good value for these with `bin/rails secret`
SECRET_KEY_BASE=secret_key
EMAIL_SECRET_KEY=email_secret_key

# See below for instructions on getting this id and secret
HACKER_SCHOOL_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id
HACKER_SCHOOL_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret

# If you want to import accounts from the Recurse Center
# (You won't be able to do this unless you are Recurse Center faculty)
# HACKER_SCHOOL_API_SECRET_TOKEN=hacker_school_api_secret

# If you want to develop against a local copy of the Hacker School API, add:
# HACKER_SCHOOL_SITE=http://localhost:5000

# Needed for batch mail sending in production
# MAILGUN_API_KEY=your_mailgun_api_key

To generate a Recurse Center client id and secret, go to your Recurse Center settings page and make a new OAuth app. The redirect url should be http://localhost:5001/login/complete (or your development host name if you don't develop off of localhost).

Running the code

Install necessary dependencies and set up your database.

$ bundle install
$ bin/yarn
$ rails db:setup

After that, use bin/dev to start foreman which will run the Rails server as well as rails cljs:watch to continuously build the ClojureScript code.

$ bin/dev

rails cljs:watch can take as long as ~30 seconds to build all the ClojureScript, so be patient! The site won't work until it's done. Once it's finished, simply visit localhost:5001.

Running the production ClojureScript

The production client code will sometimes function differently than the development code. This can happen when you forget to add externs for a library you are calling, or if lein cljsbuild auto randomly makes a bad client. Because of this, we should test the production client before deploying. To do that, you can set CLJS_ENV to production and run bin/dev. If you don't set CLJS_ENV, it defaults to the Rails environment.

$ CLJS_ENV=production bin/dev

ClojureScript testing

To build and run ClojureScript tests once, run:

$ rails cljs:build:test cljs:test

For a quicker feedback loop, build the tests in the background:

$ rails cljs:watch:test

Then run:

$ rails cljs:test

Removing ClojureScript

If we keep using Community, we're eventually going to remove ClojureScript. Here's what you need to do.

Delete these files:

.java-version
app/clojurescript
app/assets/builds
bin/build
config/initializers/clojure_script.rb
lib/clojure_script.rb
lib/tasks/cljs.rake
package.json
project.clj
test/clojurescript
test/assets

Remove references to ClojureScript from these files:

.circleci/config.yml
app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
Procfile.dev
README.md

Remove the heroku/clojure buildpack.

License

This software is licensed under the terms of the AGPL, Version 3. The complete license can be found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html.

recursecenter / community

readme