Important:
This version is outdated and no longer maintained. Your find the current version in the Alliance Auth documentation: Direct Link
This docunent describes step-by-step how to setup a complete development environment for Alliance Auth apps on Windows 10 with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Visual Studio Code.
The main benefit of this setup is that it runs all services and code in the native Linux environment (WSL) and at the same time can be full controlled from within a comfortale Windows IDE (Visual Studio Code) including code debugging.
In addition all tools described in this guide are open source or free software.
Disclaimer: This guide is meant for development purposes only and not for installing AA in a production environment. For production installation please follow the official installation guide.
- Overview
- Requirements
- Windows Installation
- WSL Installation
- Alliance Auth installation
- Running Alliance Auth
- Debugging setup
- Additional tools
- Adding apps for development
The development environment consists of the following components:
- Visual Studio Code with Remote WSL and Python extension
- WSL with Ubunutu 18.04. LTS
- Python 3.5 environment on WSL
- MySQL server on WSL
- Redis on WSL
- Alliance Auth on WSL
- Celery on WSL
We will use the build-in Django development webserver, so we don't need to setup any WSGI or web server.
The only requirement is a PC with Windows 10 and Internet connection in order to download the additional sofware components.
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Install from: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
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Choose Ubuntu 18.04. LTS
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Install from here: https://code.visualstudio.com/Downloa
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Open the app and install the following VSC extensions:
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Remote WSL
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Connect to WSL. This will automatically install the VSC server on the VSC server for WSL
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Once connected to WSL install the Python extension on the WSL side
Open a WSL bash and update all software packets:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -ysudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install gettextsudo apt-get install python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-setuptools python3-pip python-pipFor AA we want to develop with Python 3.5, because that provides the maximum compatibility with today's AA installations. However, the default Python 3 version for Ubuntu 18.04. is 3.6, so we need to add Python 3.5 manually.
Note: If you want to develop with Python 3.6 you can ignore this step.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3.5 python3.5-dev python3.5-venvNote that installing any additional Python3 version will not overwrite your default Python3.
sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient-devNote that we chose to install mysql instead of mariadb, because the standard version of mariadb that comes with this Ubuntu distribution will not work with AA.
Start the mysql server
sudo service mysql startCreate database and user for AA
sudo mysql -u rootCREATE USER 'aa_dev'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';
CREATE DATABASE aa_dev CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON aa_dev . * TO 'aa_dev'@'localhost';
exit;Add timezone info to mysql
sudo mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | sudo mysql -u root mysqlsudo apt-get install unzip git redis-server curl libssl-dev libbz2-dev libffi-devStart redis
sudo redis-server --daemonize yesNote that WSL does not have an init.d service, so it will not automatically start your services such as MySQL and Redis when you boot your Windows machine. For convenienve we recommend putting the commands for starting these services in a bash script. In addition it is possible to configure Windows to automatically start WSL services, but that procedure goes beyong the scopes of this guide.
Setup your folders on WSL bash for your dev project. Our approach will setup one AA project with one venv and multiple apps running under the same AA project, but each in their own folder and git.
A good location for setting up this folder structure is on your home folder:
e.g. ~/aa-dev
aa-dev +- venv +- myauth +- my_app_1 +- my_app_2 +- ...
Following this approach you can also setup additional AA projects, e.g. aa-dev-2, aa-dev-3 if needed.
Create the root folder aa-dev.
Create the virtual environment with Python 3.5. Run this in your aa-dev folder:
python3.5 -m venv venvAnd activate your venv:
source venv/bin/activatepip install --upgrade pip
pip install wheelpip install allianceauthNow we are ready to setup our AA instance. Make sure to run this command in your aa-dev folder:
allianceauth start myauthNext we will setup our VSC project for aa-dev by starting it directly from the WSL bash:
code .First you want to make sure exclude the venv folder from VSC as follows:
Open settings and go to Files:Exclude
Add pattern: **/venv
Open the settings file with VSC. Its under myauth/myauth/settings/local.py
Make sure to have the settings of your Eve Online app ready.
Turn on DEBUG mode:
DEBUG = TrueUpdate name, user and pasword of your DATABASE configuration.
DATABASES['default'] = {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
'NAME': 'aa_dev',
'USER': 'aa_dev',
'PASSWORD': 'PASSWORD',
'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
'PORT': '3306',
'OPTIONS': {'charset': 'utf8mb4'},
}For the Eve Online related setup you need to create a SSO app on the developer site:
- Create your Eve Online SSO App at https://developers.eveonline.com/
- Add all ESI scopes
- Set callback URL to:
http://localhost:8000/sso/callback
Then update local.py with your settings:
ESI_SSO_CLIENT_ID = 'YOUR-ID'
ESI_SSO_CLIENT_SECRET = 'YOUR_SECRET'
ESI_SSO_CALLBACK_URL = 'http://localhost:8000/sso/callback'
Disable email regristration:
REGISTRATION_VERIFY_EMAIL = False
Before we can start AA we need to run migrations and copy static files for AA.
cd myauth
python manage.py migrateWe also need to create a superuser for our AA installation:
python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py createsuperuserWe are now ready to run out AA instance with the following command:
python manage.py runserverOnce running you can access on the browser under http://localhost:8000. Or the admin site under http://localhost:8000/admin
Note that you can start your AA server directly from a terminal window in VSC or with debug config (see chapter about debugging for details).
Debug vs. Non-Debug mode:
Usually it is best to run your dev AA instance in debug mode, so you get all the detailed error messages that helps a lot for finding errors. But there might be casese where you want to test features that do not exist in debug mode (e.g. error pages) or just want to see how your app behaves in non-debug / production mode.
When you turn off debug mode you will see a problem though: Your pages will not render correctly. The reason is that Django will stop serving your static files in production mode and expect you to serve them from a real web server. Luckily, there is an option that forces Django to continue serving your static files directly even when not in debug mode. Just start your server with the following option:python manage.py runserver --insecure
In addition you can start a celery worker instance for myauth. For development purposed it makes sense to only start one instance and add some additional logging.
This can be done from the command line with the following command in the myauth folder (where manage.py is located):
celery -E -A myauth worker -l info -P solo
Same as AA itself you can start Celery from any terminal session, from a terminal window within VSC or as a debug config in VSC (see chapter about debugging for details). For convenience we recommend starting Celery as debug config.
To be able to debug your code you need to add debugging configuration to VSC. At least one for AA and one for celery.
By default VSC will break on any uncaught exception. Since every error raised by your tests will cause an uncaught exception we recommend to deactivate this feature.
To deactivate open click on the debug icon to switch to the debug view. Then uncheck "Uncaught Exceptions" on the breakpoints window.
In VSC click on Debug / Add Configuration and choose "Django". Should Django not apear as option make sure to first open a Django file (e.g. the local.py settings) to help VSC detect that you are using Django.
The result sholud look someting like this:
{
"name": "Python: Django",
"type": "python",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/myauth/manage.py",
"args": [
"runserver",
"--noreload"
],
"django": true
}For celery we need another debug config, so that we can run it in parallel to our AA instance.
Here is an example debug config for Celery:
{
"name": "Python: Celery",
"type": "python",
"request": "launch",
"module": "celery",
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/myauth",
"console": "integratedTerminal",
"args": [
"-E",
"-A",
"myauth",
"worker",
"-l",
"info",
"-P",
"solo",
],
"django": true
},
Finally it makes sense to have a dedicated debug config for running unit tests. Here is an example config for running all tests of the app example.
{
"name": "Python: myauth unit tests",
"type": "python",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/myauth/manage.py",
"args": [
"test",
"-v 2",
"--keepdb",
"--debug-mode",
"--failfast",
"example",
],
"django": true
},
You can also specify to run just a part of your test suite down to a test method. Just give the full path to the test you want to run, e.g. example.test.test_models.TestDemoModel.test_this_method
Finally you may also want to have a debug config to debug a non-Django Python script:
{
"name": "Python: Current File",
"type": "python",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${file}",
"console": "integratedTerminal"
},
The following additional tools are very helpful when developing for AA.
Typos in your user facing comments can be quite embarrasing. This spell checker help you avoid them: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker
DBeaver is a free universal database tool and works with many different kinds of databases include MySQL. It can be installed on Windows 10 and will be able to help manage your MySQL databases running on WSL.
django-extensions is a swiss army knife for django devs with adds a lot of very useful features to your Django site. Here are a few highlights:
- shell_plus - An enhanced version of the Django shell. It will autoload all your models at startup so you don't have to import anything and can use them right away.
- graph_models - Creates a dependency graph of Django models. Visualizing a model dependency structure can be very useful for trying to understand how an existing Django app works, or e.g. how all the AA models work together.
- runserver_plus - The standard runserver stuff but with the Werkzeug debugger baked in. This is a must have for any serious debugging.
The idea behind the particular folder structure of aa-dev is to have each and every app in its own folder and git repo. To integrate them with the AA instance they need to be installed once using the -e option that enabled editing of the package. And then added to the INSTALLED_APPS settings.
To demonstrate let's add the example plugin to our environment.
Open a WSL bash and navigate to the aa-dev folder. Make sure you have activate your virtual environment. (source venv/bin/activate)
Run these commands:
git clone https://gitlab.com/ErikKalkoken/allianceauth-example-plugin.git
pip install -e allianceauth-example-pluginAdd 'example' to INSTALLED_APPS in your local.py settings.
Run migrations and restart your AA server, e.g.:
cd myauth
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver
seems to be required to have a trailing slash on your oauth callback, so
ESI_SSO_CALLBACK_URL = 'http://localhost:8000/sso/callback/'