This guide covers installation instructions in development environment, for a production guide see: How to install Discourse in production (Discourse official install / standard install)
So you want to set up Discourse on macOS to hack on and develop with?
We’ll assume that you don’t have Ruby/Rails/Postgres/Redis installed on your Mac. Let’s begin!
Install Discourse Dependencies
Run this script in terminal, to setup Rails development environment:
bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discourse/install-rails/master/mac)
This script will install following new packages on your system:
- Git
- rbenv
- ruby-build
- Ruby (latest stable)
- Rails
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Bundler
- Yarn
- MailHog
In case you have any of this package pre-installed and don’t want to run entire script, see the script and pick the packages you don’t have currently installed. The script is fine-tuned for Discourse, and includes all the packages required for Discourse installation.
Now that we have installed Discourse dependencies, let’s move on to install Discourse itself.
Clone Discourse
Clone the Discourse repository in ~/discourse
folder:
git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse.git ~/discourse
~
indicates home folder, so Discourse source code will be available in your home folder.
Bootstrap Discourse
Switch to your Discourse folder:
cd ~/discourse
Install the needed gems
bundle install
Install the JS dependencies
yarn install
Now that you have successfully installed gems, run these commands:
bundle exec rake db:create
bundle exec rake db:migrate
RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate
Try running the specs:
bundle exec rake autospec
All the tests should pass.
Start rails server:
bundle exec rails server
You should now be able to connect with your Discourse app on http://localhost:3000 - try it out!
Starting with Discourse 2.5+ EmberCLI is required in development and these additional steps will be required:
In a separate terminal instance, navigate to your discourse folder (cd ~/discourse
) and run:
bin/ember-cli
You should now be able to navigate to http://localhost:4200 to see your local Discourse installation.
Create New Admin
To create a new admin, run the following command:
RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec rake admin:create
Follow the prompts to create an admin account.
Configure Mail
Run MailHog:
mailhog
Congratulations! You are now the admin of your own Discourse installation!
Happy hacking! And to get started with that, see Beginner’s Guide to Creating Discourse Plugins.