veilid/DEVELOPMENT.md

Veilid Development

Introduction

This guide covers setting up environments for core, Flutter/Dart, and Python development. See the relevent sections.

Obtaining the source code

git clone https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid.git

Dependencies

GNU/Linux

Development of Veilid on GNU/Linux requires a Debian variant such as Debian itself, Ubuntu or Mint. Pull requests to support other distributions would be welcome!

Running the setup script requires:

• Android SDK and NDK
• Rust

You may decide to use Android Studio here to maintain your Android dependencies. If so, use the dependency manager within your IDE. If you plan on using Flutter for Veilid development, the Android Studio method is highly recommended as you may run into path problems with the 'flutter' command line without it. If you do so, you may skip to [Run Veilid setup script](#Run Veilid setup script).

• build-tools;33.0.1
• ndk;25.1.8937393
• cmake;3.22.1
• platform-tools
• platforms;android-33

Setup Dependencies using the CLI

You can automatically install the prerequisites using this script:

./dev-setup/install_linux_prerequisites.sh

Otherwise, you may choose to use Android sdkmanager. Follow the installation instructions for sdkmanager here, then use the command line to install the requisite package versions:

sdkmanager --install "platform-tools"
sdkmanager --install "platforms;android-33"
sdkmanager --install "build-tools;33.0.1"
sdkmanager --install "ndk;25.1.8937393"
sdkmanager --install "cmake;3.22.1"

Export environment variables and add the Android SDK platform-tools directory to your path.

cat << EOF >> ~/.profile 
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=<path to sdk>
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/ndk/25.1.8937393
export PATH=\$PATH:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/platform-tools
EOF

Run Veilid setup script

Now you may run the Linux setup script to check your development environment and pull the remaining Rust dependencies:

./dev-setup/setup_linux.sh

Run the veilid-flutter setup script (optional)

If you are developing Flutter applications or the flutter-veilid portion, you should install Android Studio, and run the flutter setup script:

cd veilid-flutter
./setup_flutter.sh

macOS

Development of Veilid on MacOS is possible on both Intel and ARM hardware.

Development requires:

• Android Studio
• Xcode, preferably latest version
• Homebrew here
• Android SDK and NDK
• Rust

You will need to use Android Studio here to maintain your Android dependencies. Use the SDK Manager in the IDE to install the following packages (use package details view to select version):

• Android SDK Build Tools (33.0.1)
• NDK (Side-by-side) (25.1.8937393)
• Cmake (3.22.1)
• Android SDK 33
• Android SDK Command Line Tools (latest) (7.0/latest)

Setup command line environment

Export environment variables and add the Android SDK platform-tools directory to your path.

cat << EOF >> ~/.zshenv
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/25.1.8937393
export PATH=\$PATH:$HOME/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools
EOF

Run Veilid setup script (macOS)

Now you may run the MacOS setup script to check your development environment and pull the remaining Rust dependencies:

./dev-setup/setup_macos.sh

Run the veilid-flutter setup script (optional) (macOS)

If you are developing Flutter applications or the flutter-veilid portion, you should install Android Studio, and run the flutter setup script:

cd veilid-flutter
./setup_flutter.sh

Windows

For a simple installation allowing Rust development, follow these steps:

Install Git from https://git-scm.com/download/win

Install Rust from https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup/dist/x86_64-pc-windows-msvc/rustup-init.exe

Ensure that protoc.exe is in a directory in your path. For example, it can be obtained from https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/download/v24.3/protoc-24.3-win64.zip

Ensure that capnp.exe is in a directory in your path. For example, it can be obtained from https://capnproto.org/capnproto-c++-win32-1.0.1.zip

Start a Command Prompt window.

git clone https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid.git
cd veilid
cargo build
cd target
cd debug
veilid-server.exe

This may result in a popup window from local security software, asking whether you wish to allow network access by veilid-server.exe.

To use the CLI, navigate to the above debug directory in another Command Prompt window (while veilid-server.exe is still running), and type:

veilid-cli.exe

Running the Application(s)

Veilid Server

In order to run the veilid-server locally:

cd ./veilid-server
cargo run

In order to see what options are available:

cargo run -- --help

Configuration

veilid-server has a wealth of configuration options. Further documentation on the format of the veilid-server.conf file may be found in the project /doc directory.

When running veilid-server in a Unix-like environment, the application will look for its config file under /etc/veilid-server/. If the config file is not found in this location, veilid-server will follow the XDG user directory spec and look in ~/.config/veilid-server.

When running under Windows, the veilid-server.conf file may be created at C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Veilid\Veilid\, and when running under macOS, at /Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/org.Veilid.Veilid.

Veilid CLI

In order to connect to your local veilid-server:

cd ./veilid-cli
cargo run

Similar to veilid-server, you may see CLI options by typing:

cargo run -- --help

Building the Application

Linux Packages

Veilid server and cli can be built locally using the Earthly framework. After installing earthly on your local machine, you may use the earthly cli to initiate a build:

earthly +package-linux

This will assemble all dependencies and build .deb packages for both amd64 and arm64 platforms. Earthly, built on Docker, caches build layers, so after a longer first build, subsequent builds should be much quicker.

During development, you may want to kick off specific build steps. To see a list of the build steps configured, consult the Earthfile, or you may use the earthly cli:

earthly ls