This document describes setting up a development environment for working on CommCare HQ. Such an environment is not suitable for real projects. Production environments should be deployed and managed using commcare-cloud
These instructions are for Mac or Linux computers. For Windows, consider using an Ubuntu virtual machine.
Common issues and their solutions can be found at the end of this document.
If you're setting up HQ on a new computer, you may have an old, functional environment around. If you don't want to start from scratch, back up your Postgres and Couch data.
-
PostgreSQL
-
Create a pg dump. You'll need to verify the host IP address:
$ pg_dump -h 0.0.0.0 -U commcarehq commcarehq > /path/to/backup_hq_db.sql
-
-
CouchDB
- From a non-Docker install: Copy
/var/lib/couchdb2/
- From a Docker install: Copy
~/.local/share/dockerhq/couchdb2
.
- From a non-Docker install: Copy
Save those backups to somewhere you'll be able to access from the new environment.
-
$ sudo apt install git
-
Python 3.6 and
python-dev
. In Ubuntu you will also need to install the modules for pip and venv explicitly.$ sudo apt install python3-dev python3-pip python3-venv
-
$ sudo python3 -m pip install virtualenvwrapper
-
Requirements of Python libraries, if they aren't already installed.
$ sudo apt install libpango1.0-0 postgresql-common libncurses-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev
-
You may need to use
sudo
to for some of the above setup:$ sudo python get-pip.py $ sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper --ignore-installed six
-
Additional requirements:
-
Set the
WORKON_HOME
environment variable to the path where you keep your virtual environments. If you don't already have a home for your virtual environments, ~/venv is not a bad choice:$ export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/venv $ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
-
Create a virtual environment for CommCare HQ. "commcare-hq" is a good name, but naming it "cchq" might save you some typing in the future:
$ python3 -m venv $WORKON_HOME/cchq
-
Ubuntu no longer ships with Python 2 and its Python binary is named "python3" to avoid ambiguity. You may need to tell virtualenvwrapper where to find Python:
$ export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
-
Enable virtualenvwrapper:
$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
-
You will want to add virtualenvwrapper settings to your startup script, say, ~/.bashrc, or ~/.zshrc. For example:
$ cat <<EOF >> ~/.bashrc export WORKON_HOME=\$HOME/venv export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3 source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh EOF
-
Activate your virtual environment:
$ workon cchq
Once all the dependencies are in order, please do the following:
$ git clone https://github.com/dimagi/commcare-hq.git
$ cd commcare-hq
$ git submodule update --init --recursive
$ setvirtualenvproject # optional - sets this directory as the project root
Next, install the appropriate requirements (only one is necessary).
-
Recommended for those developing CommCare HQ
$ pip install -r requirements/dev-requirements.txt
-
For production environments
$ pip install -r requirements/prod-requirements.txt
-
Minimum required packages
$ pip install -r requirements/requirements.txt
(If this fails you may need to install lxml's dependencies or pango.)
Note that once you're up and running, you'll want to periodically re-run these steps, and a few others, to keep your environment up to date. Some developers have found it helpful to automate these tasks. For pulling code, instead of git pull
, you can run this script to update all code, including submodules. This script will update all code and do a few more tasks like run migrations and update libraries, so it's good to run once a month or so, or when you pull code and then immediately hit an error.
First create your localsettings.py
file:
$ cp localsettings.example.py localsettings.py
Enter localsettings.py
and do the following:
- Find the
LOG_FILE
andDJANGO_LOG_FILE
entries. Ensure that the directories for both exist and are writeable. If they do not exist, create them. - You may also want to add the line
from dev_settings import *
at the top of the file, which includes some useful default settings.
Create the shared directory. If you have not modified SHARED_DRIVE_ROOT
, then run:
$ mkdir sharedfiles
Once you have completed the above steps, you can use Docker to build and run all of the service containers. There are detailed instructions for setting up Docker in the docker folder. But the following should cover the needs of most developers:
$ sudo apt install docker.io
$ pip install docker-compose
$ sudo adduser $USER docker
Log in as yourself again, to activate membership of the "docker" group:
$ su - $USER
Ensure the Docker service is running:
$ sudo service docker status
Bring up the Docker containers for the services you probably need:
$ scripts/docker up postgres couch redis elasticsearch zookeeper kafka minio
or, to detach and run in the background, use the -d
option:
$ scripts/docker up -d postgres couch redis elasticsearch zookeeper kafka minio
If you previously created backups of another HQ install's data, you can now copy that to the new install.
-
Postgres
-
Make sure Postgres is running:
$ ./scripts/docker ps
-
Make sure
psql
is installed: (Ubuntu)$ sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib
-
Restore the backup:
$ psql -U commcarehq -h 0.0.0.0 commcarehq < /path/to/backup_hq_db.sql
-
-
CouchDB
-
Stop Couch:
$ ./scripts/docker stop couch
-
Copy the
couchdb2/
dir to~/.local/share/dockerhq/couchdb2
. -
Start Couch
$ ./scripts/docker start couch
-
Fire up Fauxton to check that the dbs are there: http://0.0.0.0:5984/_utils/
-
Before running any of the commands below, you should have all of the following running: CouchDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch. The easiest way to do this is using the Docker instructions above.
Populate your database:
$ ./manage.py sync_couch_views
$ ./manage.py create_kafka_topics
$ env CCHQ_IS_FRESH_INSTALL=1 ./manage.py migrate --noinput
$ ./manage.py compilejsi18n
You should run ./manage.py migrate
frequently, but only use the environment
variable CCHQ_IS_FRESH_INSTALL during your initial setup. It is used to skip a
few tricky migrations that aren't necessary for new installs.
To set up elasticsearch indexes run the following:
$ ./manage.py ptop_preindex
This will create all of the elasticsearch indexes (that don't already exist) and populate them with any data that's in the database.
Next, set the aliases of the elastic indices. These can be set by a management command that sets the stored index names to the aliases.
$ ./manage.py ptop_es_manage --flip_all_aliases
We use Bower to manage our JavaScript dependencies. In order to download the required JavaScript packages,
you'll need to install bower
and run bower install
. Follow these steps to install:
-
If you do not already have npm:
For Ubuntu: In Ubuntu this is now bundled with NodeJS. An up-to-date version is available on the NodeSource repository. Run the following commands:
$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash - $ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
For macOS: Install with Homebrew:
$ brew install node
For others: install npm
-
Install Bower:
$ sudo npm -g install bower
-
Run Bower with:
$ bower install
This is required for the server side xpath validation. See package.json for exact version.
npm install dimagi/js-xpath#v0.0.2-rc1
This is the setup most developers use. If you don't know which option to use, use this one. It's the simplest to set up and the least painful way to develop: just make sure your localsettings.py
does not contain COMPRESS_ENABLED
or COMPRESS_OFFLINE
settings (or has them both set to False
).
The disadvantage is that this is a different setup than production, where LESS files are compressed.
This mirrors production's setup, but it's really only useful if you're trying to debug issues that mirror production that's related to staticfiles and compressor. For all practical uses, please use Option 1 to save yourself the headache.
Make sure your localsettings.py
file has the following set:
COMPRESS_ENABLED = True
COMPRESS_OFFLINE = True
For all STATICFILES changes (primarily LESS and JavaScript), run:
$ ./manage.py collectstatic
$ ./manage.py compilejsi18n
$ ./manage.py fix_less_imports_collectstatic
$ ./manage.py compress
Formplayer is a Java service that allows us to use applications on the web instead of on a mobile device.
In localsettings.py
:
FORMPLAYER_URL = 'http://localhost:8010'
LOCAL_APPS += ('django_extensions',)
When running HQ, be sure to use runserver_plus
:
$ ./manage.py runserver_plus 0.0.0.0:8000
Then you need to have Formplayer running.
Prerequisites:
-
Install Java
$ sudo apt install openjdk-8-jre
-
Initialize formplayer database. The password for the "commcarehq" user is in the localsettings.py file in the
DATABASES
dictionary.$ sudo apt install postgresql-client $ createdb formplayer -U commcarehq -h localhost
To get set up, download the settings file and formplayer.jar
. You may run this
in the commcare-hq repo root.
$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dimagi/formplayer/master/config/application.example.properties -o formplayer.properties
$ curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/dimagi-formplayer-jars/latest-successful/formplayer.jar -o formplayer.jar
Thereafter, to run Formplayer, navigate to the dir where you installed them above (probably the repo root), and run:
$ java -jar formplayer.jar --spring.config.name=formplayer
This starts a process in the foreground, so you'll need to keep it open as long
as you plan on using Formplayer. If Formplayer stops working, you can try
re-fetching it using the same command above. Feel free to add it to your
hammer
command or wherever.
$ curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/dimagi-formplayer-jars/latest-successful/formplayer.jar -o formplayer.jar
We recommend disabling the cache. In Chrome, go to Dev Tools > Settings > Preferences > Network and check "Disable cache (while DevTools is open)"
Make sure the required services are running (PostgreSQL, Redis, CouchDB, Kafka, Elasticsearch).
$ ./manage.py check_services
Some of the services listed there aren't necessary for very basic operation, but it can give you a good idea of what's broken.
Then run the following separately:
# run the Django server
$ ./manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000
# Keeps elasticsearch index in sync
$ ./manage.py run_ptop --all
# Setting up the asynchronous task scheduler (only required if you have CELERY_TASK_ALWAYS_EAGER=False in settings)
$ celery -A corehq worker -l info
Create a superuser for your local environment
$ ./manage.py make_superuser <email>
By default, HQ uses vellum minified build files to render form-designer. To use files from Vellum directly, do following
# localsettings.py:
VELLUM_DEBUG = "dev"
# symlink your Vellum code to submodules/formdesigner
$ ln -s absolute/path/to/Vellum absolute/path/to/submodules/formdesigner/
It is usually not required to have a local airflow environment running.
However, if you do need to get setup on Airflow (which is used to back some reporting infrastructure) you can follow the instructions in the pipes repository.
To run the standard tests for CommCare HQ, simply run
$ ./manage.py test
To run a particular test or subset of tests
$ ./manage.py test <test.module.path>[:<TestClass>[.<test_name>]]
# examples
$ ./manage.py test corehq.apps.app_manager
$ ./manage.py test corehq.apps.app_manager.tests.test_suite:SuiteTest
$ ./manage.py test corehq.apps.app_manager.tests.test_suite:SuiteTest.test_picture_format
# alternate: file system path
$ ./manage.py test corehq/apps/app_manager
$ ./manage.py test corehq/apps/app_manager/tests/test_suite.py:SuiteTest
$ ./manage.py test corehq/apps/app_manager/tests/test_suite.py:SuiteTest.test_picture_format
If database tests are failing because of a permission denied
error, give your
Postgres user permissions to create a database.
In the Postgres shell, run the following as a superuser:
# ALTER USER commcarehq CREATEDB;
To avoid having to run the database setup for each test run you can specify the
REUSE_DB
environment variable
which will use an existing test database if one exists:
$ REUSE_DB=1 ./manage.py test corehq.apps.app_manager
Or, to drop the current test DB and create a fresh one
$ ./manage.py test corehq.apps.app_manager --reusedb=reset
See corehq.tests.nose.HqdbContext
for full description
of REUSE_DB
and --reusedb
.
You can run all tests with a certain tag as follows:
$ ./manage.py test --attr=tag
Available tags:
- all_backends: all tests decorated with
run_with_all_backeds
See http://nose.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins/attrib.html for more details.
See https://github.com/nose-devs/nose/blob/master/nose/plugins/testid.py
In order to run the JavaScript tests you'll need to install the required npm packages:
$ npm install
It's recommended to install grunt globally in order to use grunt from the command line:
$ npm install -g grunt
$ npm install -g grunt-cli
In order for the tests to run the development server needs to be running on port 8000.
To run all JavaScript tests in all the apps:
$ grunt mocha
To run the JavaScript tests for a particular app run:
$ grunt mocha:<app_name> // (e.g. grunt mocha:app_manager)
To list all the apps available to run:
$ grunt list
To run tests from the browser (useful for debugging) visit this url:
http://localhost:8000/mocha/<app_name>
Occasionally you will see an app specified with a #
, like app_manager#b3
. The string after #
specifies that the test uses an alternate configuration. To visit this suite in the browser go to:
http://localhost:8000/mocha/<app_name>/<config> // (e.g. http://localhost:8000/mocha/app_manager/b3)
By running the watch
command, it's possible to continuously run the JavaScript test suite while developing
$ grunt watch:<app_name> // (e.g. grunt watch:app_manager)
You can also use sniffer to auto run the Python tests.
When running, sniffer auto-runs the specified tests whenever you save a file
For example, you are working on the retire
method of CommCareUser
. You are writing a RetireUserTestCase
, which you want to run every time you make a small change to the retire
method, or to the testCase
. Sniffer to the rescue!
$ sniffer -x <test.module.path>[:<TestClass>[.<test_name>]]
In our example, we would run
$ sniffer -x corehq.apps.users.tests.retire:RetireUserTestCase`
You can also add the regular nose
environment variables, like REUSE_DB=1 sniffer -x <test>
For JavaScript tests, you can add --js-
before the JavaScript app test name, for example:
$ sniffer -x --js-app_manager
You can combine the two to run the JavaScript tests when saving js files, and run the Python tests when saving py files as follows:
$ sniffer -x --js-app_manager -x corehq.apps.app_manager:AppManagerViewTest
https://github.com/jeffh/sniffer/ (recommended to install pyinotify or macfsevents for this to actually be worthwhile otherwise it takes a long time to see the change)