Cockpit Files

Development dependencies

On Debian/Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt install gettext nodejs npm make

On Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install gettext nodejs npm make

Getting and building the source

These commands check out the source and build it into the dist/ directory:

git clone https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-files.git
cd cockpit-files
make

Installing

make install compiles and installs the package in /usr/local/share/cockpit/. The convenience targets srpm and rpm build the source and binary rpms, respectively. Both of these make use of the dist target, which is used to generate the distribution tarball. In production mode, source files are automatically minified and compressed. Set NODE_ENV=production if you want to duplicate this behavior.

For development, you usually want to run your module straight out of the git tree. To do that, run make devel-install, which links your checkout to the location were cockpit-bridge looks for packages. If you prefer to do this manually:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/cockpit
ln -s `pwd`/dist ~/.local/share/cockpit/cockpit-files

After changing the code and running make again, reload the Cockpit page in your browser.

You can also use watch mode to automatically update the bundle on every code change with

$ npm run watch

or

$ make watch

When developing against a virtual machine, watch mode can also automatically upload the code changes by setting the RSYNC environment variable to the remote hostname.

$ RSYNC=c make watch

When developing against a remote host as a normal user, RSYNC_DEVEL can be set to upload code changes to ~/.local/share/cockpit/ instead of /usr/local.

$ RSYNC_DEVEL=example.com make watch

To "uninstall" the locally installed version, run make devel-uninstall, or remove manually the symlink:

rm ~/.local/share/cockpit/cockpit-files

Running eslint

Cockpit Files uses ESLint to automatically check JavaScript code style in .js and .jsx files.

eslint is executed as part of test/static-code, aka. make codecheck.

For developer convenience, the ESLint can be started explicitly by:

$ npm run eslint

Violations of some rules can be fixed automatically by:

$ npm run eslint:fix

Rules configuration can be found in the .eslintrc.json file.

Running stylelint

Cockpit uses Stylelint to automatically check CSS code style in .css and scss files.

styleint is executed as part of test/static-code, aka. make codecheck.

For developer convenience, the Stylelint can be started explicitly by:

$ npm run stylelint

Violations of some rules can be fixed automatically by:

$ npm run stylelint:fix

Rules configuration can be found in the .stylelintrc.json file.

Running tests locally

Run make check to build an RPM, install it into a standard Cockpit test VM (centos-8-stream by default), and run the test/check-application integration test on it. This uses Cockpit's Chrome DevTools Protocol based browser tests, through a Python API abstraction. Note that this API is not guaranteed to be stable, so if you run into failures and don't want to adjust tests, consider checking out Cockpit's test/common from a tag instead of main (see the test/common target in Makefile).

After the test VM is prepared, you can manually run the test without rebuilding the VM, possibly with extra options for tracing and halting on test failures (for interactive debugging):

TEST_OS=centos-9-stream test/check-application -tvs

It is possible to setup the test environment without running the tests:

TEST_OS=centos-9-stream make prepare-check

You can also run the test against a different Cockpit image, for example:

TEST_OS=fedora-38 make check