Using Dev Containers in Visual Studio Code

The project includes a dev container configuration that allows you to use Visual Studio Code’s Remote Development extension to develop the project in a consistent environment. This can be especially helpful if you are new to the project or if you have a different environment setup on your local machine.

Prerequisites

Before you can use the dev container, you will need to install the following:

Using the Dev Container

To use the dev container for the Activepieces project, follow these steps:

  1. Clone the Activepieces repository to your local machine.
  2. Open the project in Visual Studio Code.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+P and type > Dev Containers: Reopen in Container.
  4. Run npm start.
  5. The backend will run at localhost:3000 and the frontend will run at localhost:4200.

By default, the development setup only builds specific pieces.Open the file packages/server/api/.env and add comma-separated list of pieces to make available.

For more details, check out the Piece Development section.

The login credentials are:
Email: dev@ap.com Password: 12345678

Exiting the Dev Container

To exit the dev container and return to your local environment, follow these steps:

  1. In the bottom left corner of Visual Studio Code, click the Remote-Containers: Reopen folder locally button.
  2. Visual Studio Code will close the connection to the dev container and reopen the project in your local environment.

Troubleshoot

One of the best trouble shoot after an error occur is to reset the dev container.

  1. Exit the dev container
  2. Run the following
    sh tools/reset-dev.sh
    
  3. Rebuild the dev container from above steps