Hi all,
I finally merged my PR [1] which improves the development server for the D-Installer
frontend. It completely changed how it works.
Now the dev server serves the D-Installer Cockpit plugin and the Hot Module
Replacement end point. It redirects all Cockpit requests to another server,
it works like a proxy.
To start the dev server use this command:
COCKPIT_TARGET= npm run server
Where COCKPIT_TARGET is the IP address or hostname of the running D-Installer
instance. If you do not set that variable it will by default connect to the local
server (at https://localhost:9090).
Then open https://localhost:8080 in your browser or use "npm run server -- --open"
to open it automatically.
It generates a self-signed SSL certificate, you have to accept it in the first
connection in the browser. The generated certificate is saved to a cache
and is used next time so you have to accept it just once.
See more details in the documentation [2].
What are the advantages?
- You do not need to run the web frontend on the same machine as the backend
- I'm running Leap 15.4 on my workstation, Cockpit is not available for this
release so I cannot run it against the local Cockpit instance. That makes the
development very difficult.
- I can run the D-Installer backend using the Live ISO in a VM, that makes the
development more safe, I cannot delete my disks accidentally when starting the
installation :)
- I can use my Visual Studio Code installed locally, you can use your preferred
editor as well ;-)
- Actually you could even use a different distro, you just need nodejs + npm
and some editor for developing the frontend.
- The hot module replacement [3] now fully works, you will see your changes
in the browser immediately after saving a file without reloading the page.
- The previous approach used some hacks and did not integrate well (mixed different
protocols (https vs http), used different hosts and ports on the same
page - browsers do not like that and block that because of security).
That has been removed.
Enjoy :-)
Ladislav
[1] https://github.com/yast/d-installer/pull/439
[2] https://github.com/yast/d-installer/tree/master/web#using-a-development-serv...
[3] https://webpack.js.org/concepts/hot-module-replacement/
--
Ladislav Slezák
YaST Developer
SUSE LINUX, s.r.o.
Corso IIa
Křižíkova 148/34
18600 Praha 8
