The Official Dotman Website

The Official Website for Dotman Comics

Tech Stack

• Python 3.14 / Django 5.2
• PostgreSQL — primary database
• S3-compatible storage (RustFS / MinIO) — static and media files
• uv — dependency and virtual environment management
• ruff — linting

Quick Start (Dev Container)

I'm using Dev Containers so that everything starts up nice and proper. Just need VS Code and the Dev Containers extension.

After the container starts, run the following once to prepare the database and publish static assets:

uv run manage.py migrate
uv run manage.py collectstatic

Note: Authorize claude from outside the Dev Container before starting, as it can't authorize reliably from inside. Make sure both ~/.claude and ~/.claude.json are mounted to the vscode user's home directory in the Dev Container.

Basic Commands

Running the dev server

uv run manage.py migrate
uv run manage.py runserver

Note: migrate only needs to run once, but it's safe to run again — it detects no new migrations and does nothing.

Creating a superuser

uv run manage.py createsuperuser

Running tests

uv run pytest

Note: pyproject.toml has configurations for pytest to work.

Linting

uv run ruff check --diff .

Formatting

This will check the formatting and report any errors:

uv run ruff format --check .

This will automatically format the code:

uv run ruff format

Manual Setup (without Dev Containers)

Keeping this section as a fallback in case of Dev Container issues.

You'll need:

• Homebrew
• Docker or OrbStack

Install uv:

brew install uv

Astral's uv manages Python projects, dependencies, and virtual environments.

Environment configuration

Copy env.example to .env and review the values:

cp env.example .env

Do not use the example values for production or UA environments.

Starting the backing services

Bring up the database and S3-compatible storage server:

docker compose up postgres -d
docker compose up s3 -d

Note: You will need to manually create the bucket in MinIO (the S3-compatible server) after it starts.