Installs, stages, and builds the client-side scripts necessary for running the
Galaxy webapp. When started through run.sh or any other method that utilizes
scripts/common_startup.sh, Galaxy will (since 18.09) automatically build
the client as a part of server startup, when it detects changes, unless that
functionality is explicitly disabled.
The base dependencies used are Node.js and Yarn. Galaxy now includes these in
the virtual environment, and they can be accessed by activating that with . .venv/bin/activate from the Galaxy root directory.
If you'd like to install your own dependencies, on OSX the easiest way to get
set up is using homebrew and the command brew install nodejs yarn. More
information, including instructions for other platforms, is available at
https://nodejs.org and
https://yarnpkg.com/.
The Galaxy client build has necessarily grown more complex in the past several years, but we are still trying to keep things as simple as possible for everyone. If you're having any trouble with building the client after following the instructions below, please create an issue on GitHub or reach out for help directly on Gitter at https://gitter.im/galaxyproject/Lobby.
There are many moving parts to the client build system, but the entry point for most people is the 'client' rule in the Makefile at the root of the Galaxy repository. Execute the following to perform a complete build suitable for local development, including dependency staging, style building, script processing, and bundling. This is a development-specific build which includes extra debugging features, and excludes several production optimizations made during the build process.
make client
For a production build, suitable for deploying to a live server, use the following:
make client-production
And, lastly, if you want a production build that includes sourcemaps to allow for inspection of live javascript to facilitate debugging, use:
make client-production-maps
Important Note: The Galaxy repository does not include client script artifacts, and these should not be committed.
When you're actively developing, it is convenient to have the client automatically rebuild every time you save a file. You can do this using:
make client-watch
This will first stage client dependencies, initiate a build, and then will watch for changes in any of the galaxy client source files. When a file is changed, the client will automatically rebuild, after which you can refresh your browser to see changes.
For even more rapid development you can use the webpack development server, which takes advantage of hot module replacement (HMR). This technique allows swapping out of javascript modules while the application is running without requiring a full page reload most of the time, at least in the more modern parts of the application.
The command below starts a special webpack dev server after a client build.
make client-dev-server
This will start up an extra client development server running on port 8081. Open your browser to http://localhost:8081 (instead of the default 8080 that Galaxy would run on), and you should see Galaxy like normal. Except now, when you change client code it'll automatically rebuild and reload the relevant portion of the application for you. Note that unlike previous versions of this functionality, it is no longer required to use uWSGI for this. Lastly, if you are running Galaxy at a location other than the default, you can specify a different proxy target (in this example, port 8000) using the GALAXY_URL environment variable:
GALAXY_URL="http://localhost:8000" make client-dev-server
Sometimes you want to run your local UI against a remote Galaxy server. This is also possible, if you enable CHANGE_ORIGIN flag
CHANGE_ORIGIN=true GALAXY_URL="https://usegalaxy.org/" make client-dev-server
Galaxy uses Sass for its styling, which is a superset of CSS that compiles down to regular CSS. Most Galaxy styling source (.scss) files are kept in `client/src/style/scss. There are additionally style blocks alongside some Vue components -- styles that are particular to that individual component and do not apply site-wide.
On build, the compiled css bundle is served at /static/style/base.css.
As mentioned above, make client will rebuild styles, as a part of the webpack
build. For iterative development, "Watch Mode" rebuilds as described above do
include style changes.
Galaxy's client is undergoing an extensive refactoring and modernizing process. As part of this initiative, we would like to request that all new client-side code submissions come with accompanying javascript unit-tests for the developer-facing API of your new code.
Galaxy uses Jest for its client-side unit testing framework.
For testing Vue components, we use the Vue testing utils to mount individual components in a test bed and check them for rendered features. Please use jest-based mocking for isolating test functionality.
A set of older qUnit tests also exist which will be phased-out as the code they support is replaced with modern component-based implementations. In the meantime, we still run the qunit tests in sequence.
To simply run all the javascript unit tests, you can use make from the root directory. This is what happens during a complete client build.
make client-test
During client-side development, it is more convenient to have granular testing
options. The various testing scripts are defined inside package.json within the
client folder, and are called with yarn as demonstrated in the
following commands.
This is what CI is going to run, and also what 'make client-test' invokes, executing all the client tests:
yarn run test
You can also bypass qunit and single-run all of the jest tests like so:
yarn run jest
Or, if you really want to run just the qunit tests:
yarn run qunit
This is incredibly handy, and there are a host of options in the interactive terminal this starts for executing Jest tests.
yarn run jest-watch
yarn run jest-watch MyModule
yarn run jest-watch Dialog
yarn run jest-watch workflow/run