Forem Creators and Builders 🌱

Christopher Wray
Christopher Wray

Posted on

Getting forem to run well on windows for development

For Hackoberfest, I am hoping to contribute to the Dev community some!

I have a Linux VM, but I was kind of hoping to be able to do the development on the forem codebase on my Windows machine.

What is the best way to go about doing this? Any tips from those that have gone before?

Thank you!

Top comments (8)

Collapse
 
nektro profile image
Meghan

haven't tested this, but you can try using the provided docker-compose file. launching this would only require having docs.docker.com/compose/ installed, and running docker-compose up in the folder you have forem cloned.

Collapse
 
cwraytech profile image
Christopher Wray

Yeah, I wish I could run Docker. Unfortunately, I have Windows Home and Docker is only available to pro users.

I actually just realized that Laragon can run Ruby so I am going to try that way. I use Laragon for PHP dev and it works great.

Collapse
 
nektro profile image
Meghan

Also found this for more specific instructions docs.forem.com/installation/contai...

Thread Thread
 
cwraytech profile image
Christopher Wray

Thank you, BTW, is there any way to edit the Forem docs CSS?

Thread Thread
 
nektro profile image
Meghan
Collapse
 
cpluta profile image
Chris Pluta

We followed the Windows Install guide and it works out well for us!

If you are looking at the windows install documentation you will notice it's a little out of date. The key differences are using elasticsearch-7.9.2, node v12.8.3 and rails 6.0.3.3. With node we use nvm to manage the versions. In terms of editor we use VSCode.

We have yet to need docker and everything has worked through yarn.

Full disclosure -- we set this up before WSL2 was a thing, but we still have yet to use docker all though the installation says it's needed. But we are able to run redis from WSL, elastic search from Windows and the rails server via WSL. If you want to follow this method let me know and I will hunt through a bunch of emails to see if I have better documentation between my partners and I to get you going. 😁

Collapse
 
cwraytech profile image
Christopher Wray

Chris, thank you!

Collapse
 
mickcod profile image
Georgexp97

Windows is a refined and safe system. This system has been developed over the years. It's worth testing it yourself, especially since the price in this store is very affordable: royalcdkeys.com/products/windows-1...