App development setup

šŸ’» Development
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1

Hello,

I want to start with app development and am currently trying to set up the development environment.

  • The official docs tell me that I should set up everything including nextcloud core and an apache server on my local machine. I donā€™t want to do that.
  • The workshop of sleepypioneer is quite old, but telling me to look at David-developmentā€™s docker-dev.
  • David-Developmentā€™s docker dev is basically exactly what I am looking for and even kind of recent, but itā€™s using nextcloud 14 and nodesource 8. If I change that to nextcloud 18 and nodesource 10 and try to run it for the ā€˜mailā€™ app, I get around 200 warnings and the following error:
app_1  | npm ERR! code 128
app_1  | npm ERR! Command failed: git clone --depth=1 -q -b 0.2.1 https://github.com/owncloud/davclient.js.git /root/.npm/_cacache/tmp/git-clone-929ff0cd
app_1  | npm ERR! fatal: could not create leading directories of '/root/.npm/_cacache/tmp/git-clone-929ff0cd': Permission denied
app_1  | npm ERR! 
app_1  | 
app_1  | npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
app_1  | npm ERR!     /root/.npm/_logs/2020-02-27T03_08_37_329Z-debug.log
app_1  | make: *** [Makefile:36: install-npm-deps-dev] Error 1
  • This video series is pretty cool and itā€™s using docker, but itā€™s relying on editing code remotely via ftp limiting my freedom in choosing an IDE. It also manually installs software in an interactive docker session and needs to run a command after every container restart.

Summing up, there is one solution where I have to install everything locally, one solution which goes in the right direction, but has some serious limitations and one solution which sounds perfect but doesnā€™t work.

Why is it so hard? Why isnā€™t there an automated docker dev setup explained in the official docs to make getting started easy? Does anybody have advice for me regarding a working setup without the need to install a bunch of software on my machine?

2

Hello,

i assume it is hard because every developer has its own opinion how the perfect development environment should look like.

First of all let me give a few hints that maybe help you on short notice:

  • If you do not want to add a lot of software to you normal running system then a virtual machine or a second disk/partition with another system is maybe the right solution
  • Which IDE do you want to use? Remote FTP access is not such an unusual feature for an IDE.
  • I do not know how much you are into docker, but instead of accessing the code via ftp you could use a volume to access the data on the host system.

Second of all I also think, that there could be more help for new developers to setup a development environment and it would also help to discuss errors in the development process, if environments are not completely different.

Nevertheless I think it is hard to find a common solution, but maybe we can get closer by collecting, what is needed and what solutions people already use for this:

  • Operating Systems where it can be installed on:
    • Which Linuxes?
    • Windows 10?
    • MacOS?
  • IDE:
    • Standard features like Syntax highlight, code complition, refactor, ā€¦
    • Suported Language: php, javascript, ā€¦
    • Integration of Unit Test/Integration Test Runs
    • ā€¦
  • Testing
    • Running nextcloud instance
    • PHPunit
    • A javascript Unit Test Framework?
    • Several browsers on several OS to test the results?

What else is missing?
What solutions are working good for you out there? Did you use a virtual machine for that or docker or something else?

3
4

In case anybody finds this like me: The juliushaertl dev-Setup maybe okay, but itā€™s still pretty over the top. I think itā€™s what you might want when developing nextcloud itself. If you ā€œjustā€ want to mess around with an app, I figured out, things actually are pretty simple, just not documented.

What 95% of potential App developers probably want is the official Nextcloud container. It comes with an apache and a sqlight included. Just mount your app and you have everything you need for nextloud-app development.

So hereā€™s your steps.

  1. install podman (or docker)
  2. setup podman for running rootless running (podman/rootless_tutorial.md at master Ā· containers/podman Ā· GitHub) (skip for docker)
  3. create your skeleton app (Generate app - App Store - Nextcloud)
  4. create an ā€œappsā€ directory and put your app-skeleton inside it
  5. launch

Launch with podman (leaner than docker and allows you to run containers without being root):
podman run --name=nextcloud --replace=true -p 8080:80 -v /YOUR_FULL_PATH/apps:/var/www/html/custom_apps docker.io/nextcloud
Launch with docker (not tested):
sudo docker run --name=nextcloud --replace=true -p 8080:80 -v /YOUR_FULL_PATH/apps:/var/www/html/custom_apps nextcloud

Nextcloud should now run on localhost:8080. Continue with the tutorial (enable you skeleton in nextcloud ā€¦).