Developer Environment Setup¶

The instructions here are for macOS; where appropriate, they'll proffer a Linux equivalent.

Info

Because I don't develop on Windows, I don't have equivalent instructions for setting up there. I would welcome Windows versions of these instructions!

Install your dependencies¶

On macOS, that means installing the following:

Just
gsed
uv
Docker (with the compose addon)

For simplicity, these instructions assume that you have Homebrew installed. After installing each tool, set your PATH appropriately as needed.

Just

Just is a task runner; it uses a Justfile to describe steps to run, and I use it here to manage the setup and development processes.

Install it from your package manager:
```
$ brew install just
$ just --version
just 1.16.0
```
gsed

gsed is required on MacOS to run several scripts that bootstrap the Python environment. Linux environments are fine with just sed.
```
$ brew install gnu-sed
$ gsed --version
gsed (GNU sed) 4.9
```

uv

uv is a Python package and project manager.

$ brew install uv
... lots of output
$ uv -V
uv 0.6.6 (c1a0bb85e 2025-03-12)

Docker compose

"Installing Docker" is beyond the scope of this document. You probably want Docker Desktop. Once it's installed and running, this should work:
```
$ docker compose ps
NAME                IMAGE               COMMAND                  SERVICE             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS
```
For most of the development process, Docker is only used to run the local PostgreSQL, Redis, and mailcatcher components used in testing and locally running the site.