Setting up local lemmy-ui instance with remote backend?

[alectrocute]

Hi all!

I'd like to work on contributing to the lemmy-ui project. As a mere frontend dev, I'd like to setup a local lemmy-ui instance and use a remote backend server on latest macOS. Can you please link me a guide or write up quick steps to make this possible?

I tried:

• Setting up the lemmy-ui repo locally, with submodules init'd. yarn start launched the frontend server successfully but couldn't connect to ds9.lemmy.ml as exported in my LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST , LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_WS_HOST env variables. I also tried setting LEMMY_UI_DISABLE_CSP to true. I feel this is the closest I got.
• Using docker-compose for both the frontend and backend locally, resulting in error:

➜  docker git:(main) docker-compose up -d        
WARNING: Compose V1 is no longer supported and will be removed from Docker Desktop in an upcoming release. See https://docs.docker.com/go/compose-v1-eol/
Creating network "docker_lemmyinternal" with driver "bridge"
Creating network "docker_lemmyexternalproxy" with the default driver
Building lemmy
[+] Building 31.3s (7/13)                                                                     [+] Building 150.8s (11/13)                                                                   
 => [internal] load build definition from Dockerfile                                     0.0ss
 => => transferring dockerfile: 1.05kB                                                   0.0ss
 => [internal] load .dockerignore                                                        0.0ss
 => => transferring context: 159B                                                        0.0ss
 => [internal] load metadata for docker.io/library/alpine:3                              2.0ss
 => [internal] load metadata for docker.io/clux/muslrust:1.67.0                          2.1ss
 => [builder 1/5] FROM docker.io/clux/muslrust:1.67.0@sha256:c92ad5296e87681efa161fdb7  90.4ss
 => => resolve docker.io/clux/muslrust:1.67.0@sha256:c92ad5296e87681efa161fdb7421bb136b  0.0ss
 => => sha256:c92ad5296e87681efa161fdb7421bb136ba5df399441a40638c40d017 2.63kB / 2.63kB  0.0ss
 => => sha256:d6f3e144d2803bee2d077a3df724c1520fe955643b268a1ba1f36e1ea 9.35kB / 9.35kB  0.0ss
 => => sha256:677076032cca0a2362d25cf3660072e738d1b96fe860409a33ce90 29.53MB / 29.53MB  14.4ss
 => => sha256:5a29a0b17d46b7b1d04f1d546a963ccfe081a450e2052c04fa8b 144.87MB / 144.87MB  63.2ss
 => => sha256:c7ef976a78f92529b797cad48392238452b8c1dd2672ee9b3dcb 242.70MB / 242.70MB  85.5ss
 => => extracting sha256:677076032cca0a2362d25cf3660072e738d1b96fe860409a33ce901d695d7e  0.5ss
 => => sha256:1e828fad7190aae6eec504d9476280438b183f6348d7d5d8bf5b26a0964e72 93B / 93B  14.7ss
 => => sha256:d4a038b3b0a22ad9b1037f48fa03f0dc418eae3027379944e5f8a0033a84 323B / 323B  14.8ss
 => => sha256:1b51050bd60fa556db640e0ce9b0b314954051c6fd93253d830c7b 96.70kB / 96.70kB  15.1ss
 => => sha256:7a95cb992bf8a55f85816b91f77a4d7372998d969c8a3927cae0e612 5.82MB / 5.82MB  20.4ss
 => => sha256:fd096cec950947b901ccbf75a6b112e2db82ec14f3c1471b0a2eb24d 2.71MB / 2.71MB  23.0ss
 => => sha256:021b9a3178ead0f121951343256594cf9f7dea58f296c2b7e4357d 30.34MB / 30.34MB  45.6ss
 => => sha256:788cead171c881c1f2b1c3a340e69f989370cd0b1859b3596a8cdda1 1.56MB / 1.56MB  47.3ss
 => => sha256:6eaf35cb08c399776199bc9062d2e6ed17cc4f1b0f368613205fa5033ffc61 95B / 95B  47.5ss
 => => extracting sha256:5a29a0b17d46b7b1d04f1d546a963ccfe081a450e2052c04fa8ba2f381fcbb  2.1ss
 => => extracting sha256:c7ef976a78f92529b797cad48392238452b8c1dd2672ee9b3dcb9664596cef  3.0ss
 => => extracting sha256:1e828fad7190aae6eec504d9476280438b183f6348d7d5d8bf5b26a0964e72  0.0ss
 => => extracting sha256:d4a038b3b0a22ad9b1037f48fa03f0dc418eae3027379944e5f8a0033a8466  0.0ss
 => => extracting sha256:1b51050bd60fa556db640e0ce9b0b314954051c6fd93253d830c7b1309234e  0.0ss
 => => extracting sha256:7a95cb992bf8a55f85816b91f77a4d7372998d969c8a3927cae0e61294d18f  0.3ss
 => => extracting sha256:fd096cec950947b901ccbf75a6b112e2db82ec14f3c1471b0a2eb24defb403  0.1s
 => => extracting sha256:021b9a3178ead0f121951343256594cf9f7dea58f296c2b7e4357dae1a525f  0.7s
 => => extracting sha256:788cead171c881c1f2b1c3a340e69f989370cd0b1859b3596a8cdda1deef85  0.0s
 => => extracting sha256:6eaf35cb08c399776199bc9062d2e6ed17cc4f1b0f368613205fa5033ffc61  0.0s
 => [lemmy 1/3] FROM docker.io/library/alpine:3@sha256:02bb6f428431fbc2809c5d1b41eab5a6  0.1s
 => => resolve docker.io/library/alpine:3@sha256:02bb6f428431fbc2809c5d1b41eab5a6835019  0.0s
 => => sha256:44dd6f2230041eede4ee5e792728313e43921b3e46c1809399391535c 1.49kB / 1.49kB  0.0s
 => => sha256:02bb6f428431fbc2809c5d1b41eab5a68350194fb508869a33cb1af44 1.64kB / 1.64kB  0.0s
 => => sha256:30e6d35703c578ee703230b9dc87ada2ba958c1928615ac8a674fcbbcbb0f 528B / 528B  0.0s
 => [internal] load build context                                                        0.3s
 => => transferring context: 23.29MB                                                     0.3s
 => [lemmy 2/3] RUN apk add libpq                                                        2.5s
 => [builder 2/5] WORKDIR /app                                                           1.4s
 => [builder 3/5] COPY . .                                                               0.1s
 => ERROR [builder 4/5] RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/app/target     if [ "debug" = "  56.8s
------                                                                                        
 > [builder 4/5] RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/app/target     if [ "debug" = "debug" ] ; then       echo "pub const VERSION: &str = "$(git describe --tag)";" > "crates/utils/src/version.rs"       && cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl       && cp ./target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/debug/lemmy_server /app/lemmy_server;     fi:
#0 3.208     Updating crates.io index
#0 56.77 Killed
------
Dockerfile:13
--------------------
  12 |     # Debug mode build
  13 | >>> RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/app/target \
  14 | >>>     if [ "$RUST_RELEASE_MODE" = "debug" ] ; then \
  15 | >>>       echo "pub const VERSION: &str = \"$(git describe --tag)\";" > "crates/utils/src/version.rs" \
  16 | >>>       && cargo build --target ${CARGO_BUILD_TARGET} \
  17 | >>>       && cp ./target/$CARGO_BUILD_TARGET/$RUST_RELEASE_MODE/lemmy_server /app/lemmy_server; \
  18 | >>>     fi
  19 |     
--------------------
ERROR: failed to solve: process "/bin/sh -c if [ \"$RUST_RELEASE_MODE\" = \"debug\" ] ; then       echo \"pub const VERSION: &str = \\\"$(git describe --tag)\\\";\" > \"crates/utils/src/version.rs\"       && cargo build --target ${CARGO_BUILD_TARGET}       && cp ./target/$CARGO_BUILD_TARGET/$RUST_RELEASE_MODE/lemmy_server /app/lemmy_server;     fi" did not complete successfully: exit code: 137

If I can get this setup, I'd love to spend a lot of free time contributing to this project. This is my main hurdle currently and it's been a bit of a headache to get up and running.

Thanks so much.

[robertnabbe]

Same boat!

[nomizzz]

Same here, been spelunking a little bit to find out how these environment variables are connected, I'm assuming others could just outline exactly what ENVs need to be set to develop lemmy-ui locally with a remote backend?

[ctsrc]

Hi guys. If you want you can make an account on my Lemmy instance https://zapad.nstr.no/ and then we can look at how we can connect your locally running lemmy-ui to the backend of my Lemmy instance.

Ping me here after you've created an account.

[dankxiaobong]

@alectrocute were you able to do some progress on this? @jsit I noticed you were able to populate your local instance with content in this screenshot https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1395#issuecomment-1597715840, did you populate this manually or were you able to connect to another backend?