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Advanced setup

Contents:

Installing directly on Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, or Fedora
Installing directly on Windows 10 with WSL 2
Using the Vagrant Hyper-V provider on Windows
Newer versions of supported platforms

Installing directly on Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, or Fedora

If you'd like to install a Zulip development environment on a computer that's running one of:

Ubuntu 20.04 Focal, 18.04 Bionic
Debian 10 Buster, 11 Bullseye (beta)
CentOS 7 (beta)
Fedora 33 and 34 (beta)
RHEL 7 (beta)

You can just run the Zulip provision script on your machine.

Note: You should not use the root user to run the installation. If you are using a remote server, see the section on creating appropriate user accounts.

:::{warning} There is no supported uninstallation process with this method. If you want that, use the Vagrant environment, where you can just do vagrant destroy to clean up the development environment. :::

Start by [cloning your fork of the Zulip repository][zulip-rtd-git-cloning] and [connecting the Zulip upstream repository][zulip-rtd-git-connect]:

git clone --config pull.rebase git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/zulip.git
cd zulip
git remote add -f upstream https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

# On CentOS/RHEL, you must first install epel-release, and then python36,
# and finally you must run `sudo ln -nsf /usr/bin/python36 /usr/bin/python3`
# On Fedora, you must first install python3
# From a clone of zulip.git
./tools/provision
source /srv/zulip-py3-venv/bin/activate
./tools/run-dev.py  # starts the development server

Once you've done the above setup, you can pick up the documentation on using the Zulip development environment, ignoring the parts about vagrant (since you're not using it).

Installing directly on Windows 10 with WSL 2

Zulip's development environment is most easily set up on Windows using the WSL 2 installation method described here.

Install WSL 2 by following the instructions provided by Microsoft here.
Install the Ubuntu 18.04 Linux distribution from the Microsoft Store.

Launch the Ubuntu 18.04 shell and run the following commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install rabbitmq-server memcached redis-server postgresql

Open /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf using e.g.:
```
sudo vim /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf
```
Add the following lines at the end of your file and save:
```
NODE_IP_ADDRESS=127.0.0.1
NODE_PORT=5672
```
Make sure you are inside the WSL disk and not in a Windows mounted disk. You will run into permission issues if you run provision from zulip in a Windows mounted disk.
```
cd ~  # or cd /home/USERNAME
```

[Clone your fork of the Zulip repository][zulip-rtd-git-cloning] and [connecting the Zulip upstream repository][zulip-rtd-git-connect]:

git clone --config pull.rebase git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/zulip.git ~/zulip
cd zulip
git remote add -f upstream https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

Run the following to install the Zulip development environment and start it (click Allow access if you get popups for Windows Firewall blocking some services)
```
# Start database, cache, and other services
./tools/wsl/start_services
# Install/update the Zulip development environment
./tools/provision
# Enter the Zulip Python environment
source /srv/zulip-py3-venv/bin/activate
# Start the development server
./tools/run-dev.py
```
:::{note} If you shut down WSL, after starting it again, you will have to manually start the services using ./tools/wsl/start_services. :::
If you are facing problems or you see error messages after running ./tools/run-dev.py, you can try running ./tools/provision again.
Visual Studio Code Remote - WSL is recommended for editing files when developing with WSL.
You're done! You can pick up the documentation on using the Zulip development environment, ignoring the parts about vagrant (since you're not using it).

WSL 2 can be uninstalled by following Microsoft's documentation

Using the Vagrant Hyper-V provider on Windows (beta)

You should have Vagrant and Hyper-V installed on your system. Ensure they both work as expected.

NOTE: Hyper-V is available only on Windows Enterprise, Pro, or Education.

Start by [cloning your fork of the Zulip repository][zulip-rtd-git-cloning] and [connecting the Zulip upstream repository][zulip-rtd-git-connect]:
```
git clone --config pull.rebase git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/zulip.git
cd zulip
git remote add -f upstream https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git
```

You will have to open up powershell with administrator rights in order to use Hyper-V. Then provision the development environment:

vagrant up --provider=hyperv

You should get output like this:

Bringing machine 'default' up with 'hyperv' provider...
==> default: Verifying Hyper-V is enabled...
==> default: Verifying Hyper-V is accessible...
<other stuff>...
==> default: Waiting for the machine to report its IP address...
    default: Timeout: 120 seconds
    default: IP: 172.28.119.70
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 172.28.122.156
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Preparing SMB shared folders...
Vagrant requires administrator access for pruning SMB shares and
may request access to complete removal of stale shares.
==> default: Starting the machine...
<other stuff>...
 default: Username (user[@domain]): <your-machine-username>
 default: Password (will be hidden):

At this point, you will be prompted for your Windows administrator username and password (not your Microsoft account credentials).

SSH into your newly created virtual machine
```
vagrant ssh
```
This will ssh you into the bash shell of the Zulip development environment where you can execute bash commands.
Set the EXTERNAL_HOST environment variable.
```
(zulip-py3-venv) vagrant@ubuntu-18:/srv/zulip$ export EXTERNAL_HOST="$(hostname -I | xargs):9991"
(zulip-py3-venv) vagrant@ubuntu-18:/srv/zulip$ echo $EXTERNAL_HOST
```
The output will be like:
```
172.28.122.156:9991
```
Make sure you note down this down. This is where your zulip development web server can be accessed.

:::{important} The output of the above command changes every time you restart the Vagrant development machine. Thus, it will have to be run every time you bring one up. This quirk is one reason this method is marked experimental. :::

You should now be able to start the Zulip development server.

(zulip-py3-venv) vagrant@ubuntu-18:/srv/zulip$ ./tools/run-dev.py

The output will look like:

Starting Zulip on:

     http://172.30.24.235:9991/

Internal ports:
   9991: Development server proxy (connect here)
   9992: Django
   9993: Tornado
   9994: webpack

Visit the indicated URL in your web browser.

You can stop the development environment using vagrant halt, and restart it using vagrant up and then going through steps 3 and 4 again.

Problems you may encounter

If you get the error Hyper-V could not initialize memory, this is likely because your system has insufficient free memory to start the virtual machine. You can generally work around this error by closing all other running programs and running vagrant up --provider=hyperv again. You can reopen the other programs after the provisioning is completed. If it still isn't enough, try restarting your system and running the command again.
Be patient the first time you run ./tools/run-dev.py.

As with other installation methods, please visit #provision help in the Zulip development community server if you need help.

Newer versions of supported platforms

You can use our provisioning tool to set up the Zulip development environment on current versions of these platforms reliably and easily, so we no longer maintain manual installation instructions for these platforms.

If tools/provision doesn't yet support a newer release of Debian or Ubuntu that you're using, we'd love to add support for it. It's likely only a few lines of changes to tools/lib/provision.py and scripts/lib/setup-apt-repo if you'd like to do it yourself and submit a pull request, or you can ask for help in #development help on chat.zulip.org, and a core team member can help guide you through adding support for the platform.

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