joplin/BUILD.md

Building the applications

Note that all the applications share the same library, which, for historical reasons, is in ReactNativeClient/lib. This library is copied to the relevant directories when building each app.

Required dependencies

• Install yarn - https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/install/
• Install node 10+ - https://nodejs.org/en/
• macOS, Linux: Install rsync - https://nodejs.org/en/
• macOS: Install Cocoapods - brew install cocoapods
• Windows: Install Windows Build Tools - npm install -g windows-build-tools

Building

Before doing anything else, from the root of the project, run:

npm install

Then you can test the various applications:

Testing the desktop application

cd ElectronClient
npm start

Testing the Terminal application

cd CliClient
npm start

Testing the Mobile application

First you need to setup React Native to build projects with native code. For this, follow the instructions on the Get Started tutorial, in the "React Native CLI Quickstart" tab.

Then:

cd ReactNativeClient
npm run start-android
# Or: npm run start-ios

To run the iOS application, it might be easier to open the file ios/Joplin.xcworkspace on XCode and run the app from there.

Normally the bundler should start automatically with the application. If it doesn't, run npm start.

Building the clipper

cd Clipper/popup
npm install
npm run watch # To watch for changes

To test the extension please refer to the relevant pages for each browser: Firefox / Chrome. Please note that the extension in dev mode will only connect to a dev instance of the desktop app (and vice-versa).

Watching files

To make changes to the application, you'll need to rebuild any TypeScript file you've changed, and rebuild the lib. The simplest way to do all this is to watch for changes from the root of the project. Simply run this command, and it should take care of the rest:

npm run watch

Running npm run build would have the same effect, but without watching.

Running an application with additional parameters

You can specify additional parameters when running the desktop or CLI application. To do so, add -- to the npm start command, followed by your flags. For example:

npm start -- --profile ~/MyTestProfile

TypeScript

Most of the application is written in JavaScript, however new classes and files should generally be written in TypeScript. All TypeScript files are generated next to the .ts or .tsx file. So for example, if there's a file "lib/MyClass.ts", there will be a generated "lib/MyClass.js" next to it. It is implemented that way as it requires minimal changes to integrate TypeScript in the existing JavaScript code base.

In the current setup, tsc is executed from the root of the project, and will compile everything in CliClient, ElectronClient, etc. This is more convenient to have just one place to compile everything, and it also means there's only one watch command to run. However, one drawback is that TypeScript doesn't find types defined in node_modules folders in sub-directories. For example, if you install immer in ElectronClient, then try to use the package, TypeScript will report that it cannot find this module. In theory using typeRoots, it should be possible to make it find the right modules but it doesn't seem to work in this case. Currently the workaround is to install any such package at the root of the project. By doing so, TypeScript will find the type definitions and compilation will work. It's not ideal since the module is installed at the root even though it's not used, but for now that will work.

Hot reload

If you'd like to auto-reload the desktop app on changes rather than having to quit and restart it manually each time, you can use watchman-make:

cd ElectronClient
watchman-make -p '**/*.js' '**/*.jsx' --run "npm start"

It still requires you to quit the application each time you want it to rebuild, but at least you don't have to re-run "npm start" each time. Here's what the workflow loop looks like in practice:

1. Edit and save files in your text editor.
2. Switch to the Electron app and cmd+Q to quit it.
3. watchman immediately restarts the app for you (whereas usually you'd have to switch back to the terminal, type "npm start", and hit enter).

Updating Markdown renderer packages

The Markdown renderer is located under ReactNativeClient/lib/joplin-renderer. Whenever updating one of its dependencies, such as Mermaid or Katex, please run npm run buildAssets to make sure all assets such as fonts or CSS files are deployed correctly.

Troubleshooting

Please read for the Build Troubleshooting Document for various tips on how to get the build working.