Installing Forem on macOS

Installing prerequisites

Ruby

  1. If you don't already have a Ruby version manager, we highly recommend rbenv. Please follow their installation guide.
  2. With the Ruby version manager, install the Ruby version listed on our badge. (i.e. with rbenv: rbenv install $(cat .ruby-version))

Yarn

Please refer to their installation guide.

PostgreSQL

Forem requires PostgreSQL version 11 or higher to run.

The easiest way to get started is to use Postgres.app. Alternatively, check out the official PostgreSQL site for more installation options.

For additional configuration options, check our PostgreSQL setup guide.

ImageMagick

Forem uses ImageMagick to manipulate images on upload.

You can install ImageMagick with brew install imagemagick.

Redis

Forem requires Redis version 6.0 or higher to run.

We recommend using Homebrew:

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brew install redis

you can follow the post installation instructions, we recommend using brew services to start Redis in the background:

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brew services start redis

You can test if it's up and running by issuing the following command:

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redis-cli ping

Elasticsearch

Forem requires Elasticsearch 7.x to run. We recommend version 7.5.2.

You have the option of installing Elasticsearch with Homebrew or through an archive. We recommend installing from archive on Mac.

Installing Elasticsearch from the archive

We recommend that you do not install Elasticsearch in the app directory. Instead, we recommend installing it in your home directory (for example, cd $HOME). (This also ensures that we don't accidentally commit Elasticsearch code to the project's repository!)

The following directions were taken from the Elasticsearch docs themselves, so check those out if you run into any issues or want further information. Make sure to download the OSS version of Elasticsearch, elasticsearch-oss.

Please note that you will need wget in order to proceed with this installation (brew install wget).

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wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss-7.5.2-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss-7.5.2-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c elasticsearch-oss-7.5.2-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz.sha512
tar -xzf elasticsearch-oss-7.5.2-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz

To start elasticsearch, make sure you are in the correct directory:

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cd elasticsearch-7.5.2

You can then start it by running:

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./bin/elasticsearch

To start elasticsearch as a daemonized process:

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./bin/elasticsearch -d

Installing Elasticsearch with Homebrew

To install Elasticsearch with Homebrew we will use the following commands to:

  • tap the Elastic Homebrew repository
  • install the latest OSS distribution
  • pin the latest OSS distribution.
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brew tap elastic/tap
brew install elastic/tap/elasticsearch-oss
brew pin elasticsearch-oss

After installation you can manually test if the Elasticsearch server starts by issuing the command elasticsearch in the shell. You can then start the server as a service with brew services start elasticsearch-oss.

You can find further info on your local Elasticsearch installation by typing brew info elastic/tap/elasticsearch-oss.

Troubleshooting startup issues

Two possible startup issues you might encounter:

  • java.nio.file.FileSystemLoopException:
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Exception in thread "main" org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.BootstrapException: java.nio.file.FileSystemLoopException: /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch
Likely root cause: java.nio.file.FileSystemLoopException: /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch

This happens because the installation of Elasticsearch might have a recursive link in the configuration directory causing the infinite loop:

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> ll /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch
elasticsearch -> /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch

By manually removing the link with rm -i /usr/local/etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch the issue should be fixed.

  • java.lang.IllegalStateException:
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java.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not load plugin descriptor for plugin directory [plugins]
Likely root cause: java.nio.file.NoSuchFileException: /usr/local/Cellar/elasticsearch-oss/7.6.0/libexec/plugins/plugins/plugin-descriptor.properties

This happens for a similar reason as the previous error, the installation might create a recursive link in the plugins directory.

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> ll /usr/local/var/elasticsearch/plugins
plugins -> /usr/local/var/elasticsearch/plugins

By manually removing the link with rm -i /usr/local/var/elasticsearch/plugins/plugins the issue should be fixed.

Testing if Elasticsearch is running

Once installed and started you can test if it's up and running correctly by issuing the following command:

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curl http://localhost:9200

You should receive in response a JSON document containing some information about your local Elasticsearch installation, for example:

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{
  "name": "hostname",
  "cluster_name": "elasticsearch_...",
  "cluster_uuid": "...",
  "version": {
    "number": "7.5.2",
    "build_flavor": "oss",
    "build_type": "tar",
    "build_hash": "8bec50e1e0ad29dad5653712cf3bb580cd1afcdf",
    "build_date": "2020-01-15T12:11:52.313576Z",
    "build_snapshot": false,
    "lucene_version": "8.3.0",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version": "6.8.0",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version": "6.0.0-beta1"
  },
  "tagline": "You Know, for Search"
}

Installing Forem

  1. Fork Forem's repository, e.g. https://github.com/forem/forem/fork

  2. Clone your forked repository in one of two ways:

    • e.g. with HTTPS: git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/forem.git
    • e.g. with SSH: git clone git@github.com:<your-username>/forem.git
  3. Install bundler with gem install bundler

  4. Set up your environment variables/secrets

    • Take a look at .env_sample to see all the ENV variables we use and the fake default provided for any missing keys.
    • If you use a remote computer as dev env, you need to set APP_DOMAIN variable to the remote computer's domain name.
    • The backend guide will show you how to get free API keys for additional services that may be required to run certain parts of the app.

    • For any key that you wish to enter/replace, follow the steps below.

      1. Create .env by copying from the provided template (i.e. with bash: cp .env_sample .env). This is a personal file that is ignored in git.
      2. Obtain the development variable and apply the key you wish to enter/replace. i.e.:
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 export CLOUDINARY_API_KEY="SOME_REAL_SECURE_KEY_HERE"
 export CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET="ANOTHER_REAL_SECURE_KEY_HERE"
 export CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME="A_CLOUDINARY_NAME"

    • You do not need "real" keys for basic development. Some features require certain keys, so you may be able to add them as you go.

  5. Run bin/setup

Possible error messages

Error: __NSPlaceholderDate initialize] may have been in progress in another thread when fork() was called

Solution: Run the command export OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=YES (or set -x OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY YES in fish shell)

Error: User does not have CONNECT privilege.

Solution: Complete the steps outlined in the PostgreSQL setup guide.

Error: rbenv: version '<version number>' is not installed (set by /Path/To/Local/Repository/.ruby-version)

Solution: Run the command rbenv install <version number>

Error: ruby-build: definition not found: <version number> when rbenv was installed via brew.

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ruby-build: definition not found: <version number>

See all available versions with `rbenv install --list`.
If the version you need is missing, try upgrading ruby-build:

Solution: Run the following to update ruby-build, brew update && brew upgrade ruby-build. After that, rerun rbenv install <version number> and that version will get installed.

Error:

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== Preparing database ==
    Sorry, you can't use byebug without Readline. To solve this, you need to
    rebuild Ruby with Readline support. If using Ubuntu, try `sudo apt-get
    install libreadline-dev` and then reinstall your Ruby.
rails aborted!
LoadError: dlopen(/Users/<username>/.rbenv/versions/2.6.5/lib/ruby/2.6.0/x86_64-darwin18/readline.bundle, 9): Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.<some version number>.dylib

Solution: Run ln -s /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.dylib /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.<some version number>.dylib from the command line then run bin/setup again. You may have a different version of libreadline, so replace <some version number> with the version that errored.

Error:

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PG::Error: ERROR:  invalid value for parameter "TimeZone": "UTC"
: SET time zone 'UTC'

Solution: Restart your Postgres.app, or, if you installed PostgreSQL with Homebrew, restart with:

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brew services restart postgresql

If that doesn't work, reboot your Mac.

Error:

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ERROR:  Error installing pg:
  ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
  [...]
Can't find the 'libpq-fe.h header
*** extconf.rb failed ***

Solution: You may encounter this when installing PostgreSQL with the Postgres.app. Try restarting the app and reinitializing the database. If that doesn't work, install PostgreSQL with Homebrew instead: brew install postgresql

If you encountered any errors that you subsequently resolved, please consider updating this section with your errors and their solutions.