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Installing the Zulip Development environment

Those who have installed Zulip before or are experienced at administering Linux may wish to skip ahead to Brief installation instructions for Vagrant development environment, Using Docker (experimental), or Installing manually on UNIX-based platforms.

Development environment setup for first-time contributors

This section guides first-time contributors through installing the Zulip dev environment on Windows 10, OS X El Capitan, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 16.04.

The recommended method for installing the Zulip dev environment is to use Vagrant with VirtualBox on Windows and OS X, and Vagrant with LXC on Ubuntu. This method creates a virtual machine (for Windows and OS X) or a Linux container (for Ubuntu) inside which the Zulip server and all related services will run.

Contents:

If you encounter errors installing the Zulip dev environment and they are not addressed in Troubleshooting & Common Errors, send a note to the Zulip-devel Google group or file an issue.

Requirements

Installing the Zulip dev environment requires downloading several hundred megabytes of dependencies. You will need an active internet connection throughout the entire installation processes. (See Specifying a proxy if you need a proxy to access the internet.)

  • All: 1.5GB available RAM, Active broadband internet connection.
  • OS X: OS X (El Capitan recommended, untested on previous versions), Git, VirtualBox, Vagrant.
  • Ubuntu: 14.04 64-bit or 16.04 64-bit, Git, Vagrant, lxc.
  • Windows: Windows 64-bit (Win 10 recommended; Win 7 untested), hardware virtualization enabled (VT-X or AMD-V), administrator access, Cygwin, VirtualBox, Vagrant.

Don't see your system listed above? Check out:

Step 1: Install Prerequisites

Jump to:

OS X

  1. Install VirtualBox
  2. Install Vagrant

Now you are ready for Step 2: Get Zulip Code.

Ubuntu 14.04

If you're in a hurry, you can copy and paste into your terminal after which you can jump to Step 2: Get Zulip Code:

sudo apt-get purge vagrant
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/1.8.1/vagrant_1.8.1_x86_64.deb
sudo dpkg -i vagrant*.deb
sudo apt-get install git lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir
vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc

For a step-by-step explanation, read on.

1. Install Vagrant

For 14.04 Trusty you'll need a more recent version of Vagrant than what's available in the official Ubuntu repositories.

First uninstall any vagrant package you may have installed from the Ubuntu repository:

christie@trusty-desktop:~
$ sudo apt-get purge vagrant

Now download and install the most recent .deb package from Vagrant:

christie@trusty-desktop:~
$ wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/1.8.1/vagrant_1.8.1_x86_64.deb

christie@trusty-desktop:~
$ sudo dpkg -i vagrant*.deb
2. Install remaining dependencies

Now install git and lxc-related packages:

christie@trusty-desktop:~
$ sudo apt-get install git lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir
3. Install the vagrant lxc plugin:
christie@trusty-desktop:~
$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc
Installing the 'vagrant-lxc' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-lxc (1.2.1)'!

Now you are ready for Step 2: Get Zulip Code.

Ubuntu 16.04

If you're in a hurry, you can copy and paste into your terminal after which you can jump to Step 2: Get Zulip Code:

sudo apt-get install git vagrant lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir
vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc
vagrant lxc sudoers

For a step-by-step explanation, read on.

1. Install git, vagrant, lxc, and related dependencies:
christie@xenial-desktop:~
$ sudo apt-get install git vagrant lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir
2. Install the vagrant lxc plugin:
christie@xenial-desktop:~
$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc
Installing the 'vagrant-lxc' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-lxc (1.2.1)'!

If you encounter an error when trying to install the vagrant-lxc plugin, see this.

3. Configure sudo to be passwordless

Finally, configure sudo to be passwordless when using Vagrant LXC:

christie@xenial-desktop:~
$ vagrant lxc sudoers
[sudo] password for christie:

Now you are ready for Step 2: Get Zulip Code.

Windows 10

  1. Install Cygwin. Make sure to install default required packages along with git, curl, openssh, and rsync binaries.
  2. Install VirtualBox
  3. Install Vagrant
Configure Cygwin

In order for symlinks to work within the Ubuntu virtual machine, you must tell Cygwin to create them as native Windows symlinks. The easiest way to do this is to add a line to ~/.bash_profile setting the CYGWIN environment variable.

Open a Cygwin window and do this:

christie@win10 ~
$ echo 'export "CYGWIN=$CYGWIN winsymlinks:native"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Next, close that Cygwin window and open another. If you echo $CYGWIN you should see:

christie@win10 ~
$ echo $CYGWIN
winsymlinks:native

Now you are ready for Step 2: Get Zulip Code.

Step 2: Get Zulip Code

If you haven't already created an ssh key and added it to your Github account, you should do that now by following these instructions.

  1. In your browser, visit https://github.com/zulip/zulip and click the fork button. You will need to be logged in to Github to do this.
  2. Open Terminal (OS X/Ubuntu) or Cygwin (Windows; must run as an Administrator)
  3. In Terminal/Cygwin, clone your fork:
git clone git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/zulip.git

This will create a 'zulip' directory and download the Zulip code into it.

Don't forget to replace YOURUSERNAME with your git username. You will see something like:

christie@win10 ~
$ git clone git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/zulip.git
Cloning into 'zulip'...
remote: Counting objects: 73571, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
remote: Total 73571 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 73569
Receiving objects: 100% (73571/73571), 105.30 MiB | 6.46 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (51448/51448), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Checking out files: 100% (1912/1912), done.`

Now you are ready for Step 3: Start the dev environment.

Step 3: Start the dev environment

Change into the zulip directory and tell vagrant to start the Zulip dev environment with vagrant up.

christie@win10 ~
$ cd zulip

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vagrant up

The first time you run this command it will take some time because vagrant does the following:

  • downloads the base Ubuntu 14.04 virtual machine image (for OS X and Windows) or container (for Ubuntu)
  • configures this virtual machine/container for use with Zulip,
  • creates a shared directory mapping your clone of the Zulip code inside the virtual machine/container at /srv/zulip
  • runs the tools/provision.py script inside the virtual machine/container, which downloads all required dependencies, sets up the python environment for the Zulip dev environment, and initializes a default test database.

You will need an active internet connection during the entire processes. (See Specifying a proxy if you need a proxy to access the internet.)

Once vagrant up has completed, connect to the dev environment with vagrant ssh:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vagrant ssh

You should see something like this on Windows and OS X:

Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-85-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

  System information as of Wed May  4 21:45:43 UTC 2016

  System load:  0.61              Processes:           88
  Usage of /:   3.5% of 39.34GB   Users logged in:     0
  Memory usage: 7%                IP address for eth0: 10.0.2.15
  Swap usage:   0%

  Graph this data and manage this system at:
    https://landscape.canonical.com/

  Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:
    http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud

0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.

Or something as brief as this in the case of Ubuntu:

Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-21-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

Congrats, you're now inside the Zulip dev environment!

You can confirm this by looking at the command prompt, which starts with (zulip-venv).

Next, start the Zulip server:

(zulip-venv)vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:~ $
/srv/zulip/tools/run-dev.py --interface=''

As you can see above the application's root directory, where you can execute Django's command line utilities is:

/srv/zulip/

You will see several lines of output starting with something like:

2016-05-04 22:20:33,895 INFO: process_fts_updates starting
Recompiling templates
2016-05-04 18:20:34,804 INFO: Not in recovery; listening for FTS updates
done
Validating Django models.py...
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).

Django version 1.8
Tornado server is running at http://localhost:9993/
Quit the server with CTRL-C.
2016-05-04 18:20:40,716 INFO     Tornado loaded 0 event queues in 0.001s
2016-05-04 18:20:40,722 INFO     Tornado  95.5% busy over the past  0.0 seconds
Performing system checks...

And ending with something similar to:

http://localhost:9994/webpack-dev-server/
webpack result is served from http://localhost:9991/webpack/
content is served from /srv/zulip

webpack: bundle is now VALID.
2016-05-06 21:43:29,553 INFO     Tornado  31.6% busy over the past 10.6 seconds
2016-05-06 21:43:35,007 INFO     Tornado  23.9% busy over the past 16.0 seconds

Now the Zulip server should be running and accessible. Verify this by navigating to http://localhost:9991/ in your browser on your main machine.

You should see something like this:

Image of Zulip dev environment

The Zulip server will continue to run and send output to the terminal window. When you navigate to Zulip in your browser, check your terminal and you should see something like:

2016-05-04 18:21:57,547 INFO     127.0.0.1       GET     302 582ms (+start: 417ms) / (unauth via ?)
[04/May/2016 18:21:57]"GET / HTTP/1.0" 302 0
2016-05-04 18:21:57,568 INFO     127.0.0.1       GET     301   4ms /login (unauth via ?)
[04/May/2016 18:21:57]"GET /login HTTP/1.0" 301 0
2016-05-04 18:21:57,819 INFO     127.0.0.1       GET     200 209ms (db: 7ms/2q) /login/ (unauth via ?)

Now you're ready for Step 4: Developing.

Step 4: Developing

Where to edit files

You'll work by editing files on your host machine, in the directory where you cloned Zulip. Use your favorite editor (Sublime, Atom, Vim, Emacs, Notepad++, etc.).

When you save changes they will be synced automatically to the Zulip dev environment on the virtual machine/container.

Each component of the Zulip development server will automatically restart itself or reload data appropriately when you make changes. So, to see your changes, all you usually have to do is reload your browser. More details on how this works are available below.

Don't forget to read through the code style guidelines for details about how to configure your editor for Zulip. For example, indentation should be set to 4 spaces rather than tabs.

Understanding run-dev.py debugging output

It's good to have the terminal running run-dev.py up as you work since error messages including tracebacks along with every backend request will be printed there.

See Logging for further details on the run-dev.py console output.

Committing and pushing changes with git

When you're ready to commit or push changes via git, you will do this by running git commands in Terminal (OS X/Ubuntu) or Cygwin (Windows) in the directory where you cloned Zulip on your main machine.

If you're new to working with Git/Github, check out this guide.

Maintaining the dev environment

If after rebasing onto a new version of the Zulip server, you receive new errors while starting the Zulip server or running tests, this is probably not because Zulip's master branch is broken. Instead, this is likely because we've recently merged changes to the development environment provisioning process that you need to apply to your development environmnet. To update your environment, you'll need to re-provision your vagrant machine using vagrant reload --provision (or just python tools/provision.py from /srv/zulip inside the Vagrant guest); this should be pretty fast and we're working to make it faster.

See also the documentation on the testing page for how to destroy and rebuild your database if you want to clear out test data.

Rebuilding the dev environment

If you ever want to recreate your development environment again from scratch (e.g. to test as change you've made to the provisioning process, or because you think something is broken), you can do so using vagrant destroy and then vagrant up. This will usually be much faster than the original vagrant up since the base image is already cached on your machine (it takes about 5 minutes to run with a fast Internet connection).

Shutting down the dev environment for use later

To shut down but preserve the dev environment so you can use it again later use vagrant halt or vagrant suspend.

You can do this from the same Terminal/Cygwin window that is running run-dev.py by pressing ^C to halt the server and then typing exit. Or you can halt vagrant from another Terminal/Cygwin window.

From the window where run-dev.py is running:

2016-05-04 18:33:13,330 INFO     127.0.0.1       GET     200  92ms /register/ (unauth via ?)
^C
KeyboardInterrupt
(zulip-venv)vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/srv/zulip$ exit
logout
Connection to 127.0.0.1 closed.
christie@win10 ~/zulip

Now you can suspend the dev environment:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vagrant suspend
==> default: Saving VM state and suspending execution...

If vagrant suspend doesn't work, try vagrant halt:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vagrant halt
==> default: Attempting graceful shutdown of VM...

Check out the Vagrant documentation to learn more about suspend and halt.

Resuming the dev environment

When you're ready to work on Zulip again, run vagrant up. You will also need to connect to the virtual machine with vagrant ssh and re-start the Zulip server:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vagrant up
$ vagrant ssh
/srv/zulip/tools/run-dev.py --interface=''

Next Steps

At this point you should read about using the development environment.

Troubleshooting & Common Errors

The box 'ubuntu/trusty64' could not be found (Windows/Cygwin)

If you see the following error when you run vagrant up on Windows:

The box 'ubuntu/trusty64' could not be found or
could not be accessed in the remote catalog. If this is a private
box on HashiCorp's Atlas, please verify you're logged in via
`vagrant login`. Also, please double-check the name. The expanded
URL and error message are shown below:
URL: ["https://atlas.hashicorp.com/ubuntu/trusty64"]

Then the version of curl that ships with Vagrant is not working on your machine. The fix is simple: replace it with the version from Cygwin.

First, determine the location of Cygwin's curl with which curl:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ which curl
/usr/bin/curl

Now determine the location of Vagrant with which vagrant:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ which vagrant
/cygdrive/c/HashiCorp/Vagrant/bin/vagrant

The path up until /bin/vagrant is what you need to know. In the example above it's /cygdrive/c/HashiCorp/Vagrant.

Finally, copy Cygwin's curl to Vagrant embedded/bin directory:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ cp /usr/bin/curl.exe /cygdrive/c/HashiCorp/Vagrant/embedded/bin/

Now re-run vagrant up and vagrant should be able to fetch the required box file.

os.symlink error

If you receive the following error while running vagrant up:

==> default: Traceback (most recent call last):
==> default: File "./emoji_dump.py", line 75, in <module>
==> default:
==> default: os.symlink('unicode/{}.png'.format(code_point), 'out/{}.png'.format(name))
==> default: OSError
==> default: :
==> default: [Errno 71] Protocol error

Then Vagrant was not able to create a symbolic link.

First, if you are using Windows, make sure you have run Cygwin as an administrator. By default, only administrators can create symbolic links on Windows.

Second, VirtualBox does not enable symbolic links by default. Vagrant starting with version 1.6.0 enables symbolic links for VirtualBox shared folder.

You can check to see that this is enabled for your virtual machine with vboxmanage command.

Get the name of your virtual machine by running vboxmanage list vms and then print out the custom settings for this virtual machine with vboxmanage getextradata YOURVMNAME enumerate:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vboxmanage list vms
"zulip_default_1462498139595_55484" {5a65199d-8afa-4265-b2f6-6b1f162f157d}

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vboxmanage getextradata zulip_default_1462498139595_55484 enumerate
Key: VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/srv_zulip, Value: 1
Key: supported, Value: false

If you see "command not found" when you try to run VBoxManage, you need to add the VirtualBox directory to your path. On Windows this is mostly likely C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\.

If vboxmanage enumerate prints nothing, or shows a value of 0 for VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/srv_zulip, then enable symbolic links by running this command in Terminal/Cygwin:

vboxmanage setextradata YOURVMNAME VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/srv_zulip 1

The virtual machine needs to be shut down when you run this command.

Connection timeout on vagrant up

If you see the following error after running vagrant up:

default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
default: SSH username: vagrant
default: SSH auth method: private key
default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...
default: Error: Connection timeout. Retrying...

A likely cause is that hardware virtualization is not enabled for your computer. This must be done via your computer's BIOS settings. Look for a setting called VT-x (Intel) or (AMD-V).

If this is already enabled in your BIOS, double-check that you are running a 64-bit operating system.

For further information about troubleshooting vagrant timeout errors see this post.

npm install error

The tools/provision.py script may encounter an error related to npm install that looks something like:

==> default: + npm install
==> default: Traceback (most recent call last):
==> default:   File "/srv/zulip/tools/provision.py", line 195, in <module>
==> default:
==> default: sys.exit(main())
==> default:   File "/srv/zulip/tools/provision.py", line 191, in main
==> default:
==> default: run(["npm", "install"])
==> default:   File "/srv/zulip/zulip_tools.py", line 78, in run
==> default:
==> default: raise subprocess.CalledProcessError(rc, args)
==> default: subprocess
==> default: .
==> default: CalledProcessError
==> default: :
==> default: Command '['npm', 'install']' returned non-zero exit status 34
The SSH command responded with a non-zero exit status. Vagrant
assumes that this means the command failed. The output for this command
should be in the log above. Please read the output to determine what
went wrong.

Usually this error is not fatal. Try connecting to the dev environment and re-trying the command from withing the virtual machine:

christie@win10 ~/zulip
$ vagrant ssh
(zulip-venv)vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:~
$ cd /srv/zulip
(zulip-venv)vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/srv/zulip
$ npm install
npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.0.12

These are just warnings so it is okay to proceed and start the Zulip server.

NoMethodError when installing vagrant-lxc plugin (Ubuntu 16.04)

If you see the following error when you try to install the vagrant-lxc plugin:

/usr/lib/ruby/2.3.0/rubygems/specification.rb:946:in `all=': undefined method `group_by' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/bundler.rb:275:in `with_isolated_gem'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/bundler.rb:231:in `internal_install'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/bundler.rb:102:in `install'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/plugin/manager.rb:62:in `block in install_plugin'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/plugin/manager.rb:72:in `install_plugin'
  from /usr/share/vagrant/plugins/commands/plugin/action/install_gem.rb:37:in `call'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/action/warden.rb:34:in `call'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/action/builder.rb:116:in `call'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/action/runner.rb:66:in `block in run'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/util/busy.rb:19:in `busy'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/action/runner.rb:66:in `run'
  from /usr/share/vagrant/plugins/commands/plugin/command/base.rb:14:in `action'
  from /usr/share/vagrant/plugins/commands/plugin/command/install.rb:32:in `block in execute'
  from /usr/share/vagrant/plugins/commands/plugin/command/install.rb:31:in `each'
  from /usr/share/vagrant/plugins/commands/plugin/command/install.rb:31:in `execute'
  from /usr/share/vagrant/plugins/commands/plugin/command/root.rb:56:in `execute'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/cli.rb:42:in `execute'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant/environment.rb:268:in `cli'
  from /usr/bin/vagrant:173:in `<main>'

And you have vagrant version 1.8.1, then you need to patch vagrant manually. See this post for an explanation of the issue, which should be fixed when Vagrant 1.8.2 is released.

In the meantime, read this post for how to create and apply the patch.

It will look something like this:

christie@xenial:~
$ sudo patch --directory /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/vagrant < vagrant-plugin.patch
patching file bundler.rb

Permissions errors when running the test suite in LXC

When building the development environment using Vagrant and the LXC provider, if you encounter permissions errors, you may need to chown -R 1000:$(whoami) /path/to/zulip on the host before running vagrant up in order to ensure that the synced directory has the correct owner during provision. This issue will arise if you run id username on the host where username is the user running Vagrant and the output is anything but 1000.

This seems to be caused by Vagrant behavior; for more information, see [the vagrant-lxc FAQ entry about shared folder permissions ][lxc-sf].

Brief installation instructions for Vagrant development environment

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

This is the recommended approach for all platforms, and will install the Zulip development environment inside a VM or container and works on any platform that supports Vagrant.

The best performing way to run the Zulip development environment is using an LXC container on a Linux host, but we support other platforms such as Mac via Virtualbox (but everything will be 2-3x slower).

  • If your host is Ubuntu 15.04 or newer, you can install and configure the LXC Vagrant provider directly using apt:

    sudo apt-get install vagrant lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir
vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc

    You may want to configure sudo to be passwordless when using Vagrant LXC.

  • If your host is Ubuntu 14.04, you will need to download a newer version of Vagrant, and then do the following:

    sudo apt-get install lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir
sudo dpkg -i vagrant*.deb # in directory where you downloaded vagrant
vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc

    You may want to configure sudo to be passwordless when using Vagrant LXC.

  • For other Linux hosts with a kernel above 3.12, follow the Vagrant LXC installation instructions to get Vagrant with LXC for your platform.

  • If your host is OS X or older Linux, download VirtualBox, download Vagrant, and install them both.

  • If you're on OS X and have VMWare, it should be possible to patch Vagrantfile to use the VMWare vagrant provider which should perform much better than Virtualbox. Patches to do this by default if VMWare is available are welcome!

  • On Windows: You can use Vagrant and Virtualbox/VMWare on Windows with Cygwin, similar to the Mac setup. Be sure to create your git clone using git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git -c core.autocrlf=false to avoid Windows line endings being added to files (this causes weird errors).

Once that's done, simply change to your zulip directory and run vagrant up in your terminal to install the development server. This will take a long time on the first run because Vagrant needs to download the Ubuntu Trusty base image, but later you can run vagrant destroy and then vagrant up again to rebuild the environment and it will be much faster.

Once that finishes, you can run the development server as follows:

vagrant ssh
# Now inside the container
/srv/zulip/tools/run-dev.py --interface=''

To get shell access to the virtual machine running the server to run lint, management commands, etc., use vagrant ssh.

(A small note on tools/run-dev.py: the --interface='' option will make the development server listen on all network interfaces. While this is correct for the Vagrant guest sitting behind a NAT, you probably don't want to use that option when using run-dev.py in other environments).

At this point you should read about using the development environment.

Specifying a proxy

If you need to use a proxy server to access the Internet, you will need to specify the proxy settings before running Vagrant up. First, install the Vagrant plugin vagrant-proxyconf:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-proxyconf.

Then create ~/.zulip-vagrant-config and add the following lines to it (with the appropriate values in it for your proxy):

HTTP_PROXY http://proxy_host:port
HTTPS_PROXY http://proxy_host:port
NO_PROXY localhost,127.0.0.1,.example.com

Now run vagrant up in your terminal to install the development server. If you ran vagrant up before and failed, you'll need to run vagrant destroy first to clean up the failed installation.

Installing on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty without Vagrant

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

If you'd like to install a Zulip development environment on a server that's already running Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty, you can do that by just running:

sudo apt-get update
python /srv/zulip/tools/provision.py

cd /srv/zulip
source /srv/zulip-venv/bin/activate
./tools/run-dev.py

Note that there is no supported uninstallation process without Vagrant (with Vagrant, you can just do vagrant destroy to clean up the development environment).

Installing manually on UNIX-based platforms

If you really want to install everything manually, the below instructions should work.

Install the following non-Python dependencies:

  • libffi-dev — needed for some Python extensions
  • postgresql 9.1 or later — our database (client, server, headers)
  • nodejs 0.10 (and npm)
  • memcached (and headers)
  • rabbitmq-server
  • libldap2-dev
  • python-dev
  • redis-server — rate limiting
  • tsearch-extras — better text search
  • libfreetype6-dev — needed before you pip install Pillow to properly generate emoji PNGs

On Debian or Ubuntu systems:

Using the official Ubuntu repositories and tsearch-extras deb package:

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

sudo apt-get install closure-compiler libfreetype6-dev libffi-dev \
    memcached rabbitmq-server libldap2-dev redis-server \
    postgresql-server-dev-all libmemcached-dev python-dev \
    hunspell-en-us nodejs nodejs-legacy npm git yui-compressor \
    puppet gettext

# If on 12.04 or wheezy:
sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.1
wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/283158365/zuliposs/postgresql-9.1-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i postgresql-9.1-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb

# If on 14.04:
sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3
wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/283158365/zuliposs/postgresql-9.3-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i postgresql-9.3-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb

# If on 15.04 or jessie:
sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.4
wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/283158365/zuliposs/postgresql-9.4-tsearch-extras_0.1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i postgresql-9.4-tsearch-extras_0.1_amd64.deb

Now continue with the All Systems instructions below.

Using the official Zulip PPA (for 14.04 Trusty):

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tabbott/zulip
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install closure-compiler libfreetype6-dev libffi-dev \
    memcached rabbitmq-server libldap2-dev redis-server \
    postgresql-server-dev-all libmemcached-dev python-dev \
    hunspell-en-us nodejs nodejs-legacy npm git yui-compressor \
    puppet gettext tsearch-extras

Now continue with the All Systems instructions below.

On Fedora 22 (experimental):

These instructions are experimental and may have bugs; patches welcome!

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

sudo dnf install libffi-devel memcached rabbitmq-server \
    openldap-devel python-devel redis postgresql-server \
    postgresql-devel postgresql libmemcached-devel freetype-devel \
    nodejs npm yuicompressor closure-compiler gettext

Finally continue with the All Systems instructions below.

On CentOS 7 Core (experimental):

These instructions are experimental and may have bugs; patches welcome!

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

# Add user zulip to the system (not necessary if you configured zulip
# as the administrator user during the install process of CentOS 7).
useradd zulip

# Create a password for zulip user
passwd zulip

# Allow zulip to sudo
visudo
# Add this line after line `root    ALL=(ALL)       ALL`
zulip   ALL=(ALL)       ALL

# Switch to zulip user
su zulip

# Enable EPEL 7 repo so we can install rabbitmq-server, redis and
# other dependencies
sudo yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

# Install dependencies
sudo yum install libffi-devel memcached rabbitmq-server openldap-devel \
    python-devel redis postgresql-server postgresql-devel postgresql \
    libmemcached-devel wget python-pip openssl-devel freetype-devel \
    libjpeg-turbo-devel zlib-devel nodejs yuicompressor \
    closure-compiler gettext

# We need these packages to compile tsearch-extras
sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

# clone Zulip's git repo and cd into it
cd && git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip && cd zulip/

## NEEDS TESTING: The next few DB setup items may not be required at all.
# Initialize the postgres db
sudo postgresql-setup initdb

# Edit the postgres settings:
sudo vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf

# Change these lines:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            ident
host    all             all             ::1/128                 ident
# to this:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5

Now continue with the Common to Fedora/CentOS instructions below.

On OpenBSD 5.8 (experimental):

These instructions are experimental and may have bugs; patches welcome!

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

doas pkg_add sudo bash gcc postgresql-server redis rabbitmq \
    memcached node libmemcached py-Pillow py-cryptography py-cffi

# Get tsearch_extras and build it (using a modified version which
# aliases int4 on OpenBSD):
git clone https://github.com/blablacio/tsearch_extras
cd tsearch_extras
gmake && sudo gmake install

# Point environment to custom include locations and use newer GCC
# (needed for Node modules):
export CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/sasl"
export CXX=eg++

# Create tsearch_data directory:
sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/postgresql/tsearch_data


# Hack around missing dictionary files -- need to fix this to get the
# proper dictionaries from what in debian is the hunspell-en-us
# package.
sudo touch /usr/local/share/postgresql/tsearch_data/english.stop
sudo touch /usr/local/share/postgresql/tsearch_data/en_us.dict
sudo touch /usr/local/share/postgresql/tsearch_data/en_us.affix

Finally continue with the All Systems instructions below.

Common to Fedora/CentOS instructions

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

# Build and install postgres tsearch-extras module
wget https://launchpad.net/~tabbott/+archive/ubuntu/zulip/+files/tsearch-extras_0.1.3.tar.gz
tar xvzf tsearch-extras_0.1.3.tar.gz
cd ts2
make
sudo make install

# Hack around missing dictionary files -- need to fix this to get the
# proper dictionaries from what in debian is the hunspell-en-us
# package.
sudo touch /usr/share/pgsql/tsearch_data/english.stop
sudo touch /usr/share/pgsql/tsearch_data/en_us.dict
sudo touch /usr/share/pgsql/tsearch_data/en_us.affix

# Edit the postgres settings:
sudo vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf

# Add this line before the first uncommented line to enable password
# auth:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5

# Start the services
sudo systemctl start redis memcached rabbitmq-server postgresql

# Enable automatic service startup after the system startup
sudo systemctl enable redis rabbitmq-server memcached postgresql

Finally continue with the All Systems instructions below.

All Systems:

Make sure you have followed the steps specific for your platform:

For managing Zulip's python dependencies, we recommend using a virtualenv.

Once you have created and activated a virtualenv, do the following:

pip install --upgrade pip # upgrade pip itself because older versions have known issues.
pip install --no-deps -r requirements/py2_dev.txt # install python packages required for development
./tools/setup/install-phantomjs
./tools/install-mypy
./tools/setup/download-zxcvbn
./tools/emoji_dump/build_emoji
./scripts/setup/generate_secrets.py -d
if [ $(uname) = "OpenBSD" ]; then sudo cp ./puppet/zulip/files/postgresql/zulip_english.stop /var/postgresql/tsearch_data/; else sudo cp ./puppet/zulip/files/postgresql/zulip_english.stop /usr/share/postgresql/9.3/tsearch_data/; fi
./scripts/setup/configure-rabbitmq
./tools/setup/postgres-init-dev-db
./tools/do-destroy-rebuild-database
./tools/setup/postgres-init-test-db
./tools/do-destroy-rebuild-test-database
./manage.py compilemessages
npm install

If npm install fails, the issue may be that you need a newer version of npm. You can use npm install -g npm to update your version of npm and try again.

To start the development server:

./tools/run-dev.py

… and visit http://localhost:9991/.

Proxy setup for by-hand installation

If you are building the development environment on a network where a proxy is required to access the Internet, you will need to set the proxy in the environment as follows:

  • On Ubuntu, set the proxy environment variables using:
export https_proxy=http://proxy_host:port
export http_proxy=http://proxy_host:port
  • And set the npm proxy and https-proxy using:
npm config set proxy http://proxy_host:port
npm config set https-proxy http://proxy_host:port

Using Docker (experimental)

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

The docker instructions for development are experimental, so they may have bugs. If you try them and run into any issues, please report them!

You can also use Docker to run a Zulip development environment. First, you need to install Docker in your development machine following the instructions. Some other interesting links for somebody new in Docker are:

Then you should create the Docker image based on Ubuntu Linux, first go to the directory with the Zulip source code:

docker build -t user/zulipdev .

Now you're going to install Zulip dependencies in the image:

docker run -itv $(pwd):/srv/zulip -p 9991:9991 user/zulipdev /bin/bash
$ /usr/bin/python /srv/zulip/tools/provision.py --docker
docker ps -af ancestor=user/zulipdev
docker commit -m "Zulip installed" <container id> user/zulipdev:v2

Finally you can run the docker server with:

docker run -itv $(pwd):/srv/zulip -p 9991:9991 user/zulipdev:v2 \
    /srv/zulip/tools/start-dockers

If you want to connect to the Docker instance to build a release tarball you can use:

docker ps
docker exec -it <container id> /bin/bash
$ source /home/zulip/.bash_profile
$ <Your commands>
$ exit

To stop the server use:

docker ps
docker kill <container id>

If you want to run all the tests you need to start the servers first, you can do it with:

docker run -itv $(pwd):/srv/zulip user/zulipdev:v2 /bin/bash
$ tools/test-all-docker

You can modify the source code in your development machine and review the results in your browser.

Using the Development Environment

Once the development environment is running, you can visit http://localhost:9991/ in your browser. By default, the development server homepage just shows a list of the users that exist on the server and you can login as any of them by just clicking on a user. This setup saves time for the common case where you want to test something other than the login process; to test the login process you'll want to change AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS in the not-PRODUCTION case of zproject/settings.py from zproject.backends.DevAuthBackend to use the auth method(s) you'd like to test.

While developing, it's helpful to watch the run-dev.py console output, which will show any errors your Zulip development server encounters.

When you make a change, here's a guide for what you need to do in order to see your change take effect in Development:

  • If you change Javascript, CSS, or Jinja2 backend templates (under templates/), you'll just need to reload the browser window to see changes take effect. The Handlebars frontend HTML templates (static/templates) are automatically recompiled by the tools/compile-handlebars-templates job, which runs as part of tools/run-dev.py.

  • If you change Python code used by the the main Django/Tornado server processes, these services are run on top of Django's manage.py runserver which will automatically restart the Zulip Django and Tornado servers whenever you save changes to Python code. You can watch this happen in the run-dev.py console to make sure the backend has reloaded.

  • The Python queue workers will also automatically restart when you save changes. However, you may need to ctrl-C and then restart run-dev.py manually if a queue worker has crashed.

  • If you change the database schema, you'll need to use the standard Django migrations process to create and then run your migrations; see the new feature tutorial for an example. Additionally you should check out the detailed testing docs for how to run the tests properly after doing a migration.

(In production, everything runs under supervisord and thus will restart if it crashes, and upgrade-zulip will take care of running migrations and then cleanly restaring the server for you).

Running the test suite

Zulip tests must be run inside a Zulip development environment; if you're using Vagrant, you will need to enter the Vagrant environment before running the tests:

vagrant ssh
cd /srv/zulip

To run all the tests, do this:

./tools/test-all

For more details on how to run a single test, efficiently debug test failures, or write tests, check out the detailed testing docs.

This runs the linter (tools/lint-all) plus all of our test suites; they can all be run separately (just read tools/test-all to see them). You can also run individual tests which can save you a lot of time debugging a test failure, e.g.:

./tools/lint-all # Runs all the linters in parallel
./tools/test-backend zerver.tests.test_bugdown.BugdownTest.test_inline_youtube
./tools/test-js-with-casper 09-navigation.js
./tools/test-js-with-node # Runs all node tests but is very fast

The above setup instructions include the first-time setup of test databases, but you may need to rebuild the test database occasionally if you're working on new database migrations. To do this, run:

./tools/do-destroy-rebuild-test-database

Possible testing issues

  • When running the test suite, if you get an error like this:

        sqlalchemy.exc.ProgrammingError: (ProgrammingError) function ts_match_locs_array(unknown, text, tsquery) does not   exist
    LINE 2: ...ECT message_id, flags, subject, rendered_content, ts_match_l...
                                                                 ^

    … then you need to install tsearch-extras, described above. Afterwards, re-run the init*-db and the do-destroy-rebuild*-database scripts.

  • When building the development environment using Vagrant and the LXC provider, if you encounter permissions errors, you may need to chown -R 1000:$(whoami) /path/to/zulip on the host before running vagrant up in order to ensure that the synced directory has the correct owner during provision. This issue will arise if you run id username on the host where username is the user running Vagrant and the output is anything but 1000. This seems to be caused by Vagrant behavior; for more information, see [the vagrant-lxc FAQ entry about shared folder permissions ][lxc-sf].

[lxc-sf]: https://github.com/fgrehm/vagrant-lxc/wiki/FAQ#help-my-shared-folders-have-the-wrong-owner)