Make local development significantly easier

[kjaymiller]

I'm not sure why but I am completely unable to run this project outside of a devcontainer or codespace.

I'm not sure if it's issues with my local Ruby setup or not.

I'm open to different suggestions on this but the more we force folks to use codespaces then we limit their contribution based on what they are willing to pay for.

Suggestions

Diagram

We need a diagram of the infrastructure to better understand the different tools that we're using.

• Create a Mermaid Diagram for the readme.md or contributing.md of the infrastructure in use. #402

Dockerfile

Beauty of a dockerfile is that it can be the source for the codespace (we don't have access to the existing codespace dockerfile so we'd likely need to start over. It also means that we can implement this across operating systems as well.

Make or Invoke

I don't have a preference on this but we should make it simple to setup, test, lint and run services regardless of the language.

I would probably be more comfortable with invoke since it's python code but if someone knows enough about make to make it easy to follow I wouldn't mind.

[dragid10]

Don't know if it helps at all, but I am totally able to run this repo locally! I think I was fortunate enough to have already setup my ruby environment when I was learning Jekyll

[dragid10]

I might end up wanting to take this issue as well just because I'm setting up the repo on a new laptop and can document the steps.

[TimOsahenru]

Hello @dragid10 just checking if this issue is related to your last PR that has been merged

[dragid10]

Nope! This is a separate issue related to adding instructions on how to setup your environment locally.

I'm happy to let someone else grab it though. I usually don't like squatting on multiple PRs at once, but I figured this would be easy enough for me to take since I had to setup a new laptop anyways

[TimOsahenru]

Nope! This is a separate issue related to adding instructions on how to setup your environment locally.

I'm happy to let someone else grab it though. I usually don't like squatting on multiple PRs at once, but I figured this would be easy enough for me to take since I had to setup a new laptop anyways

Oh please go ahead, just checking. Thanks

[dragid10]

For this one I think the Dockerfile route might be the best. make/invoke seems like it'd require decent testing on different operating systems to work consistently. I'm happy to create the Dockerfile for this.

Also if we're assuming that contributors will be using VS Code, then we know that Code has the remote container plugin

[kjaymiller]

We have a dockerfile for the dev container. I don't hate the idea of it.

[kjaymiller]

Just a reminder that not everyone has the ability to run docker locally

[dragid10]

okay so the goal of this issue would be to run without the need for the dev container or codespace? Like if I wanted to setup the dev environment directly on my machine, these are the steps I would follow?

[kjaymiller]

Easy steps to:

• Run locally with no DevContainer

Bonus:

• Run a DevContainer or Codespace and it not take 5 minutes to startup

I suggested make or invoke as it could be used to make the setup a one-liner. I think tox could also be an option.

[lazouich]

I'd throw in looking at nox as well. You can see an example used by jupyter and their corresponding noxfile.py file .

[kjaymiller]

I'm a nox fan... I wasn't sure if nox would be great since we have to do ruby things and python things.

I was thinking tox though.

[dragid10]

I was initially looking at make, but then thought invoke might be better for cross-platform. I can start looking into tox just to see how it compares

[lazouich]

That's fair, I'm not the biggest fan of conda - which Jupyter uses to install ruby within nox in that example ^

[kjaymiller]

I think tox is more popular then invoke... funny enough another project I monitor and try to contribute at from time to time (Valkey-py) made the choice to migrate from pyinvoke to tox

[dragid10]

I'm going to throw this one back into the pool. Work and other life events have given me less time than that I would like to effectively work this issue. And I would still need to play around with these different tools mentioned in order to get a feel for them.

It seems like there are a couple of folks that already have some experience with some of the mentioned tools, so I'm happy to unassign myself from this 🙂

[mbvgua]

Hello people. I have never worked with ruby on rails before and do not know how to setup local development. But it is getting harder to contribute to this repo since my codespaces are full.

Currently i have no knowledge of nox, invoke, docker or any other of the technical terms you are using, but If I had the appropriate guidance to the necessary documentation, i think i can work on this issue.

[Kabasitad]

Hey @kjaymiller i found this issue very interesting and would like to work on it

[Kabasitad]

Please @kjaymiller assign this issue to me

[TimOsahenru]

[Update] We no longer use make in our project setup. More ...