Embedded UI
This directory contains the client-side code for cockroach's web admin
console. These files are embedded into the cockroach binary via the
go-bindata package, which is used to
generate the embedded.go
file in this directory.
Getting Started
To get started with the UI, be sure you're able to build and run the
CockroachDB server. Instructions for this are located in the top-level README.
To bootstrap local development, you'll need to run make
in this directory;
this will download the dependencies, run the tests, and build the web console
assets.
Next, confirm that you can load the UI in debug mode by running the server
with the environment variable COCKROACH_DEBUG_UI
set to a truthy value, e.g.
COCKROACH_DEBUG_UI=1
(though any value accepted by
strconv.ParseBool will work) and
navigating to the web console.
Visual Studio Code
To get autocomplete and type-checking working in Visual Studio Code, you may
need to manually configure your typescript version. Typescript 2 is already
installed by npm, but you'll need to configure your project/workspace to point
to it. See
https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/typescript#_using-newer-typescript-versions.
Modification
As mentioned above, be sure to run the CockroachDB server in UI debug mode
while developing the web console. This causes the CockroachDB server to serve
assets directly from the disk, rather than use the compiled-in assets. These
assets will be compiled in the browser each time the page is reloaded.
NOTE: styles are not yet compiled in the browser. As a workaround, make watch
is available; it automatically watches for style changes and recompiles
them, though a browser reload is still required. Note that if you add a new
file, you'll need to restart make watch
.
When you're ready to submit your changes, be sure to run make
in this
directory to regenerate the on-disk assets so that your commit includes the
updated embedded.go
. This is enforced by our build system, but forgetting to
do this will result in wasted time waiting for the build.
We commit the generated file so that CockroachDB can be compiled with minimal
non-go dependencies.
Live Reload
The UI also supports live reload in debug mode. To take advantage of this, run
make livereload
from this directory - the UI will automatically reload files
as you modify them, taking advantage of TypeScript's incremental compilation.
Dependencies
Our web console is compiled using a collection of tools that depends on
Node.js, so you'll want to have that installed.
We use npm to manage various dependencies; be sure
that your Node.js installation includes a recent version of npm. If you
observe problems with npm, try updating it using npm install -g npm
.
To modify an existing npm dependency, you'll need to edit package.json
in
the standard fashion, while to add a new npm dependency, you'll want to run
npm install --save <myAwesomeDep>
.
Either way, complete any npm changes by running:
rm -rf node_modules npm-shrinkwrap.json && npm update --no-progress && $(npm bin)/shonkwrap && $(npm bin)/jspm update
We use JSPM to manage frontend dependencies and
Typings to manage typescript definition
files. Our Makefile automatically installs these tools locally, so for the
most part, you can be blissfully ignorant of their use. However, if you wish
to add JSPM/Typings dependencies (and do not have your own opinions on
binstubs), you'll want to run them from the local install using one of:
$(npm bin)/jspm install --save <myAwesomeDep>
$(npm bin)/typings install --save <myAwesomeDep>
Be sure to commit any changes resulting from your dependency changes.
The --save
modifiers and shonkwrap
invocation above are necessary to
properly lock down dependencies for other developers on the project, so make
sure you don't elide them!