For Acropolis, the Magic Stone fork of diaspora*
In this document we will setup a development environment. This is not the only way you can install the system for development and may not even be the best way, but it is one that was tested to work as of the last checked date.
As a prerequisite you should have a computer with 20gb of storage and 2gb of memory running Debian 11 (Bullseye). This could be a virtual machine running on your computer via VirtualBox or a VPS from your hosting provider.
Run:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential git curl gsfonts imagemagick libmagickwand-dev nodejs redis-server libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libidn11-dev libpq-dev cmake
If you receive errors about packages that could not be found, make sure that universe is enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list after the entry for trusty-updates
Skip this step if you already have one. See the Ubuntu server guide
If you installed RVM via the package manager, we recommend to remove it. See this StackOverflow answer for some tips on how to do that and then continue with the installation instructions below.
If you like a separate DB user for your diaspora* installation, log in to your PostgreSQL server as the main user 'postgres'. One way to do this is:
psql -U postgres
You need a user with the privilege to create databases.
CREATE USER diaspora WITH CREATEDB PASSWORD '<password>';
We recommend using Ruby Version Manager it will ensure you're always on the currently recommended Ruby version and cleanly separate your diaspora* installation from all other Ruby applications on your machine. If you opt for not using it ensure your Ruby version is at least 2.3.0, prior versions are incompatible. We currently recommend using the latest release of the 2.6 series.
As the user you want to run Acropolis under, that is not as root, run:
curl -L https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Raven24/4109798/raw/rvm_no_root.sh | bash
and follow the instructions. If you get GPG signature problems, follow the instructions printed by the command. Running the 'gpg --recv-keys' command with 'sudo' should not be necessary. If those commands give you permission denied errors, change them to 640 for all files and 750 for all folders in the .gnupg folder.
Ensure the following line is in your ~/.bashrc:
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"
Now run source ~/.bashrc in the terminal(s) you are using for this guide.
If you don't have sudo installed or your current user doesn't have the privileges to execute it, run:
rvm autolibs read-fail
The next command will check if all dependencies to build Ruby are installed. If these are not met, you will see a list of packages preceded by "Missing required packages:". As root install all the packages listed there for your OS. Then rerun the install command.
Ensure the currently recommend version of Ruby is installed:
rvm install 2.6
It's time to download diaspora*! As your diaspora user run:
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/magicstone-dev/acropolis.git
cd acropolis
cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
cp config/diaspora.toml.example config/diaspora.toml
It's time to install the Ruby libraries required by Acropolis:
gem install bundler
script/configure_bundler
bin/bundle install --full-index
When finished you should see a message similar to: Bundle complete! 137 Gemfile dependencies, 259 gems now installed. If that's not the case, create an issue in this repo.
Running the manual gem install command shown in the error message can sometimes show a clearer error message if the bundle command fails.
Double check your config/database.yml looks right and run:
bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate
It's time to start Acropolis
./script/server
Your server is now running, either on a unix socket (current default) or on http port 3000. The listening method can be configured in diaspora.toml, search for '3000' or 'listen' to find the correct line.
You will likely need to install a reverse proxy (example on github for apache2) in order to get it to be served publicly. If you are new to running rails applications you may find the diaspora* components page helpful for orientation.