So you want to set up a development environment for Discourse on Windows 10 (or 11)? You can do it easily using Windows Subsystem for Linux feature. It is faster too .
This setup requires the WSL 2 installation. It is only available in Windows 10 builds 18917 or higher. We’ll assume that you already installed Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (Ubuntu) on your Windows 10 system.
Let’s begin!
Installing Discourse
- Initially follow the steps from the topic Beginners Guide to Install Discourse on Ubuntu for Development until the step Clone Discourse.
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Before setting up the database you have to start PostgreSQL service & Redis server manually using following commands
sudo service postgresql start redis-server --daemonize yes
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Then go through all the remaining steps of the Ubuntu guide.
Creating a Command to Start Discourse
Now your development environment is almost ready. The only problem is every time when you open Ubuntu on Windows you have to start the PostgreSQL service & Redis server manually. Don’t worry we can have a workaround for this by creating a custom command
cd ~
Create a new file using the command nano start-discourse
and paste the content below then save and exit.
#!/bin/bash
# to start PostgreSQL
sudo service postgresql start
# to start Redis server
redis-server --daemonize yes
Now modify the CHMOD using below command
chmod +x start-discourse
And copy the file to your bin folder
sudo cp start-discourse /usr/bin/
It’s done. Now, whenever you open the Ubuntu bash just run the command below and start developing
start-discourse
Alternatively, if you are using Windows 10 enterprise, pro, or education edition then you can create a Linux virtual machine in hyper-v to set up the Discourse dev environment.
Notes About Windows Environment
As of June 30, 2020:
As of July 1, 2020
Last Reviewed by @AlexDev on 2022-06-16T02:00:00Z