OpenProject development setup on Mac OS X
To develop OpenProject a setup similar to that for using OpenProject in production is needed.
This guide assumes that you have a Mac OS X installation with administrative rights. OpenProject will be installed with a PostgreSQL database.
Please note: This guide is NOT suitable for a production setup, but only for developing with it!
If you find any bugs or you have any recommendations for improving this tutorial, please, feel free to send a pull request or comment in the OpenProject forums.
Prepare your environment
We’ll use homebrew to install most of our requirements. Please install that first using the guide on their homepage.
Install Ruby
Use rbenv and ruby-build to install Ruby. We always require the latest ruby versions, and you can check which version is required by checking the Gemfile for the ruby "~> X.Y"
statement. At the time of writing, this version is “3.3.4”
Install rbenv and ruby-build
rbenv is a ruby version manager that lets you quickly switch between ruby versions. ruby-build is an addon to rbenv that installs ruby versions.
# Install
$ brew install rbenv ruby-build
# Initialize rbenv
$ rbenv init
Installing ruby
With both installed, we can now install the actual ruby version. You can check available ruby versions with rbenv install --list
.
We suggest you install the version we require in .ruby-version. Read the first line e.g. 3.3.4
and install that version.
# Install the required version as read from the .ruby-version file
rbenv install 3.3.4
This might take a while depending on whether ruby is built from source. After it is complete, you need to tell rbenv to globally activate this version
rbenv global 3.3.4
You also need to install bundler, the ruby gem bundler.
gem install bundler
Setup PostgreSQL database
Next, install a PostgreSQL database. If you wish to use a MySQL database instead and have installed one, skip these steps.
# Install postgres database
$ brew install postgres
# Create the database instance
$ postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres
Then, create the OpenProject database user and accompanied database.
createuser -d -P openproject
You will be prompted for a password, for the remainder of these instructions, we assume its openproject-dev-password
.
Now, create the database openproject_dev
and openproject_test
owned by the previously created user.
createdb -O openproject openproject_dev
createdb -O openproject openproject_test
Install Node.js
We will install the latest LTS version of Node.js via nodenv. This is basically the same steps as for rbenv:
Install nodenv and node-build
# Install
brew install nodenv node-build
# Initialize nodenv
nodenv init
Install latest LTS node version
You can find the latest LTS version here: nodejs.org/en/download
At the time of writing this is v20.9.0. Install and activate it with:
nodenv install 20.9.0
nodenv global 20.9.0
Update NPM to the latest version
npm install npm@latest -g
Verify your installation
You should now have an active ruby and node installation. Verify that it works with these commands.
$ ruby --version
ruby 3.3.4 (2024-07-09 revision be1089c8ec) [arm64-darwin23]
$ bundler --version
Bundler version 2.5.13
node --version
v20.9.0
npm --version
10.5.0
Install OpenProject
# Download the repository
git clone https://github.com/opf/openproject.git
cd openproject
Note that we have checked out the dev
branch of the OpenProject repository. Development in OpenProject happens in the dev
branch (there is no master
branch). So, if you want to develop a feature, create a feature branch from a current dev
branch.
Configure OpenProject
Create and configure the database configuration file in config/database.yml
(relative to the openproject-directory.
vim config/database.yml
Now edit the config/database.yml
file and insert your database credentials. It should look like this (just with your database name, username, and password):
default: &default
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
host: localhost
username: openproject
password: openproject-dev-password
development:
<<: *default
database: openproject_dev
test:
<<: *default
database: openproject_test
To configure the environment variables such as the number of web server threads OPENPROJECT_WEB_WORKERS
, copy the .env.example
to .env
and add the environment variables you want to configure. The variables will be automatically loaded to the application’s environment.
Finish the Installation of OpenProject
Install code dependencies, link plugin modules and export translation files.
- gem dependencies (If you get errors here, you’re likely missing a development dependency for your distribution)
- node_modules
- link plugin frontend modules
- and export frontend localization files
bin/setup_dev
Now, run the following tasks to migrate and seed the dev database, and prepare the test setup for running tests locally.
RAILS_ENV=development bin/rails db:seed
Run OpenProject through overmind
You can run all required workers of OpenProject through overmind
, which combines them in a single tab. Optionally, you may also run overmind
as a daemon and connect to services individually. The bin/dev
command will first check if overmind
is available and run the application via Procfile.dev
. Otherwise it will use foreman
if it is available.
bin/dev
The application will be available at http://127.0.0.1:3000
. To customize bind address and port copy the .env.example
provided in the root of this project as .env
and configure values as required.
By default a worker process will also be started. In development asynchronous execution of long-running background tasks (sending emails, copying projects, etc.) may be of limited use and it has known issues with regards to memory (see background worker section below). To disable the worker process:
echo "OVERMIND_IGNORED_PROCESSES=worker" >> .overmind.env
For more information refer to the great Overmind documentation usage section.
You can access the application with the admin-account having the following credentials:
Username: admin
Password: admin
Run OpenProject manually
To run OpenProject manually, you need to run the rails server and the webpack frontend bundler to:
Rails web server
RAILS_ENV=development bin/rails server
This will start the development server on port 3000
by default.
Angular frontend
To run the frontend server, please run
RAILS_ENV=development npm run serve
This will watch for any changes within the frontend/
and compile the application javascript bundle on demand. You will need to watch this tab for the compilation output, should you be working on the TypeScript / Angular frontend part.
You can then access the application either through localhost:3000
(Rails server) or through the frontend proxied http://localhost:4200
, which will provide hot reloading for changed frontend code.
Delayed Job background worker
RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec good_job start
This will start a Delayed::Job worker to perform asynchronous jobs like sending emails.
Additional test dependencies
The test suite requires a few additional dependencies to be installed. These are not required for running OpenProject in development mode, but only for running the entire test suite.
Java 7 or later
To test the integration with LDAP servers, we rely on ladle to spin up an LDAP server when running tests. As this runs ApacheDS internally, it requires Java 7 or later to be installed.
If java is not installed, some tests will stall for 60 seconds before timing out. To run the tests, install java with
brew install openjdk
# The installation instructions will tell you to add a symlink to the JDK for the `java` command to pick it up
sudo ln -sfn $(brew --prefix)/opt/openjdk/libexec/openjdk.jdk /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk.jdk
Subversion
To test the integration with Subversion repositories, we rely on the svnadmin
command to be available. If subversion is not installed, the tests will be skipped. To run the tests, install subversion with
brew install subversion
Git
To test the integration with Git repositories, we rely on the git
command to be available. Git is either installed via the Xcode Command Line Tools, with Xcode or via homebrew.
xcode-select --install
# or
brew install git
Known issues
Spawning a lot of browser tabs
If you haven’t run this command for a while, chances are that a lot of background jobs have queued up and might cause a significant amount of open tabs (due to the way we deliver mails with the letter_opener gem). To get rid of the jobs before starting the worker, use the following command. This will remove all currently scheduled jobs, never use this in a production setting.
RAILS_ENV=development bin/rails runner "Delayed::Job.delete_all"