Installing Forem on macOS

Installing prerequisites

Ruby

  1. Note: MacOS ships with a version of Ruby, needed for various operating systems. To avoid causing an issue with your operating system you should use a version manager for Ruby.

    If you don't already have a Ruby version manager, we highly recommend rbenv. This will allow you to have different versions running on a per project basis. The MacOS system version of Ruby will stay intact while giving you the ability to use the version needed for this Forem project. 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))

    Note: The repository must be forked and cloned before running the rbenv install $(cat .ruby-version) command.

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

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: rbenv install hangs at ruby-build: using readline from homebrew

Solution: Stackoverflow answer RUBY_CONFIGURE_OPTS=--with-readline-dir="$(brew --prefix readline)" rbenv install 2.0.0

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.