The following are instructions for setting up your local machine for Flipt development. For info on using VSCode Remote Containers / GitHub Codespaces, see #cdes below.
Tip
Try our new devenv solution to quickly get setup developing Flipt!
Also check out our Contributing guide for more information on how to get changes merged into the project.
Before starting, make sure you have the following installed:
- GCC Compiler
- SQLite
- Go 1.23+
- NodeJS >= 18
- Mage
- Docker (for running tests)
Flipt uses CGO to compile SQLite.
If you run into errors such as:
undefined: sqlite3.Error
Then you need to enable CGO.
- Make sure you have the GCC Compiler installed and in your PATH.
set CGO_ENABLED=1
- Make sure you have the GCC Compiler installed and in your PATH.
export CGO_ENABLED=1
- Clone this repo:
git clone https://github.com/flipt-io/flipt
. - Run
mage bootstrap
to install required development tools. See #bootstrap below. - Run
mage go:test
to execute the Go test suite. For more information on tests, see also here - Run
mage
to build the binary with embedded assets. - Run
mage -l
to see a full list of possible commands.
Flipt uses Conventional Commits for commit messages. This allows us to automatically generate changelogs and releases. To help with this, we use pre-commit to automatically lint commit messages. To install pre-commit, run:
pip install pre-commit
or brew install pre-commit
(if you're on a Mac)
Then run pre-commit install
to install the git hook.
Flipt is built with Go 1.23+.
The bootstrap
task will install all of the necessary tools used for development and testing. It does this using a seperate tools modules as described here: https://marcofranssen.nl/manage-go-tools-via-go-modules
A sample configuration for running and developing against Flipt can be found at ./config/local.yml
. To run Flipt with this configuration, run:
./bin/flipt [--config ./config/local.yml
]
To prevent providing the config via config flag every time, you have the option of writing configuration at the location:
{{ USER_CONFIG_DIR }}/flipt/config.yml
The flipt binary will check in that location if a --config
override is not provided, so you can just invoke the binary:
./bin/flipt
The USER_CONFIG_DIR
is different based on your architecture, and specified here.
Changing certain types of files such as the proto or ui files require re-building before they will be picked up in new versions of the binary.
After changing flipt.proto
, you'll need to run mage proto
. This will regenerate the necessary files in the rpc
directory.
The UI is built using NPM and Vite and is also statically compiled into the Flipt binary using go:embed.
To develop the project with the UI also in development mode (with hot reloading):
- Run
mage ui:dev
from the root of this repository. This will start a development server on port5173
and proxy API requests to the Flipt API on port8080
. - In another terminal, run
mage dev
(ormage go:run
) from the root of this repository. This will run the backend server making it accessible on port8080
. - Visit
http://localhost:8080
to see the UI. - Any changes made in the
ui
directory will be picked up by the development server and the UI will be reloaded.
In development, the two ports that Flipt uses are:
8080
: The port for the Flipt REST API9000
: The port for the Flipt GRPC Server
These ports will be forwarded to your local machine automatically if you are developing Flipt in a VSCode Remote Container or GitHub Codespace.
If you want to develop Flipt using Docker Compose, you can use the docker-compose.yml
file in the root of this repository.
This will start two Docker containers:
server
will run the Flipt server, mounting the contents of this repository as a bind mount. This means that the database (SQLite by default) will be persisted between runs. Currently the server does not support hot reloading, so you'll need to restart the container to pick up any changes.ui
will run the UI development server, mounting theui
directory as a bind mount. This means that any changes made to the UI will be picked up by the development server and the UI will be reloaded (thanks to Vite).
To start the containers, run docker-compose up
from the root of this repository. After the containers are started, you can visit http://localhost:8080
to see the UI.
Flipt also supports Containerized Development Environments (CDE) VSCode Remote Containers/GitHub Codespaces/Gitpod.
These technologies allow you to quickly get setup with a Flipt development environment either locally or 'in the cloud'.
For VSCode Remote Containers (devcontainers), make sure you have Docker and the ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers extension installed. Then simply clone this repo, open it in VSCode and run the Remote-Containers: Open Folder in Container
command in VSCode.
Simply open Flipt in a codespaces from the Code
tab in the repo on GitHub or click the button below:
To use Gitpod, simply open Flipt in Gitpod by clicking the button below:
devenv is a solution that creates fast, declarative, reproducible, and composable developer environments using Nix.
To use it for developing Flipt, you'll first need to install it. See the devenv getting started guide for more information.
Once you have devenv installed, you can run devenv up
from the root of this repository to start a development environment.
This will start a development environment with the Flipt server running on port 8080
and the UI development server running on port 5173
.