Skip to main content

Setting up a local dev environment

Prerequisite: build the compose-tunnel-agent package​

Build the common package:

cd packages/common/
yarn && yarn build

Then, build the compose-tunnel-agent package:

cd packages/compose-tunnel-agent/
yarn && yarn build

Choose whether to build a local Tunnel Server or use a publicly available one​

Preevy uses a tunnel server to expose the deployed docker-compose services to the internet. You can read more about how it works here and here.

There are 2 options to develop preevy locally:

  1. Using the public livecycle.run tunnel server - Recommended for most use cases
  2. Run the tunnel server locally

Option 1 - Using the public livecycle.run Tunnel Server​

This option is simpler and uses the deployed Tunnel Server under livecycle.run. Use this if you're only interested in testing and developing the CLI or the Compose Tunnel Agent

Wherever you would normally run the preevy command, simply replace it with: 

# replace /path/to/ with your local path to preevy
/path/to/preevy/packages/cli/bin/dev {{ command }}

In the case of the preevy up, add the -t ssh+tls://livecycle.run flag:

# replace /path/to/ with your local path to preevy
/path/to/preevy/packages/cli/bin/dev up -t ssh+tls://livecycle.run

Option 2 - Run the Tunnel Server locally​

Use this option if you'd like to test and develop the Preevy Local Tunnel.

1. Generate SSH key pair​

inside the tunnel-server folder, run:

mkdir ssh # if does not exist
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ssh/ssh_host_key

2. Build and run the Tunnel Server​

inside the tunnel-server folder, run:

BASE_URL=http://localhost:8030 docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.override.yml up --build

3. Expose the service's SSH endpoint​

Now we want to expose the tunnel service to the internet, so the machines running in the cloud can access it. In this example, we'll be using ngrok to achieve that:

ngrok tcp 2223

The generated URL should look something like tcp://9.tcp.eu.ngrok.io:12856
Export the part without tcp:// to a variable (we'll use it in the next step):

export NGROK_HOST=9.tcp.eu.ngrok.io:12856

4. Run the CLI​

Wherever you would normally run the preevy command, simply replace it with: 

# replace /path/to/ with your local path to preevy
/path/to/preevy/packages/cli/bin/dev {{ command }}

In the case of the preevy up, add the -t ssh://$NGROK_HOST flag:

# replace /path/to/ with your local path to preevy
# replace ngrok-host:ngrok-port with the host and port you received for the `ngrok` command
/path/to/preevy/packages/cli/bin/dev up -t ssh://$NGROK_HOST