Here's where to get the code:
$ git clone https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit
$ cd cockpit/
The remainder of the commands assume you're in the top level of the Cockpit git repository checkout.
Cockpit uses Node.js during development. Node.js is not used at runtime. To make changes on Cockpit you'll want to install Node.js, NPM and various development dependencies like Webpack.
On Debian or Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs npm
On Fedora:
$ sudo yum install nodejs npm
And lastly get Webpack and the development dependencies:
$ sudo npm install -g webpack
$ npm install
When relying on CI to run the test suite, this is all that is necessary to work on the JavaScript components of Cockpit.
To actually build the Cockpit binaries themselves from source
(including to run the integration tests locally), you will need
additional header files and other components. Check
tools/cockpit.spec for the concrete Fedora build dependencies.
The following should work in a fresh Git clone:
$ sudo yum install yum-utils
$ sudo yum-builddep tools/cockpit.spec
In addition, for testing, the following dependencies are required:
$ sudo yum install curl expect \
libvirt libvirt-client libvirt-daemon libvirt-python \
python python-libguestfs python-lxml libguestfs-xfs \
libguestfs-tools qemu qemu-kvm rpm-build rsync xz
Refer to the testing README for details on running the Cockpit integration tests locally.
It is recommended to use a Vagrant virtual machine to develop Cockpit.
Most of Cockpit is written in javascript. Almost all of this code is found in the packages in the pkg/ subdirectory of the Cockpit git checkout.
To use Vagrant to develop Cockpit, run in its top level git checkout.
In some cases you may need to use sudo with vagrant commands:
$ vagrant up
Now you can edit files in the pkg/ subdirectory of the Cockpit sources.
Use the webpack command to build those sources. The changes should
take effect after syncing them to the Vagrant VM. For example:
$ webpack
$ vagrant rsync
Now log into Cockpit on the vagrant VM to see your changes. Use the user name 'admin' and the password 'foobar' to log in. The Cockpit instance in vagrant should be available at the following URL:
If you want to setup automatic syncing as you edit javascript files you can:
$ vagrant rsync-auto &
$ webpack --progress --colors --watch
It's easy to set up your local Linux machine for rapid development of Cockpit's javascript code. First install Cockpit on your local machine as described in:
http://cockpit-project.org/running.html
Next run this command from your top level Cockpit checkout directory, and make sure to run it as the same user that you'll use to log into Cockpit below.
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/
$ ln -s $(pwd)/dist ~/.local/share/cockpit
This will cause cockpit to read javascript and HTML files directly from the built package output directory instead of using the installed Cockpit UI files.
Next run Webpack to build the javascript code:
$ webpack
Now you can log into Cockpit on your local Linux machine at the following address. Use the same user and password that you used to log into your Linux desktop.
If you want to setup automatic syncing as you edit javascript files you can:
$ webpack --progress --colors --watch
To make Cockpit again use the installed code, rather than that from your git checkout directory, run the following, and log into Cockpit again:
$ rm ~/.local/share/cockpit
Make a pull request on github.com with your change. All changes get reviewed, tested and iterated on before getting into Cockpit. The general workflow is described in the wiki. Don't feel bad if there's multiple steps back and forth asking for changes or tweaks before your change gets in.
You need to be familiar with git to contribute a change. Do your changes on a branch. Your change should be one or more git commits that each contain one single logical simple reviewable change, without modifications that are unrelated to the commit message.
Cockpit is a designed project. Anything that the user will see should have design done first. This is done on the wiki and mailing list.
Bigger changes need to be discussed on #cockpit or our mailing list cockpit-devel@lists.fedoraproject.org before you invest too much time and energy.
Feature changes should have a video and/or screenshots that show the change. This video should be uploaded to Youtube or another service that allows video embedding. Use a command like this to record a video including the browser frame:
$ recordmydesktop -x 1 -y 200 --width 1024 --height 576 \
--fps 24 --freq 44100 --v_bitrate 2000000
You can also resize your browser window and move it to the right location with
a script. In Firefox you can open the Scratchpad (Shift+F4) and enter the
following commands:
$ window.resizeTo(1024, 576);
$ window.moveTo(1, 200);
Then run it with Ctrl+R when the browser is showing an empty tab, e.g.
about:newtab. You may need to adjust the positions for your environment.
All messages from the various cockpit processes go to the journal and can be seen with commands like:
$ sudo journalctl -f
Much of Cockpit has more verbose internal debug logging that can be enabled when trying to track down a problem. To turn it on add a file to your system like this:
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/cockpit.service.d
$ sudo sh -c 'printf "[Service]\nEnvironment=G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=cockpit-ws,cockpit-bridge\nUser=root\nGroup=\n" > /etc/systemd/system/cockpit.service.d/debug.conf'
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl restart cockpit
In the above command you'll notice the string "cockpit-ws". This is a log domain. There are various log domains you can enable:
- cockpit-bridge: Cockpit bridge detailed debug messages
- cockpit-protocol: Very verbose low level traffic logging
- cockpit-ws: Cockpit Web Service detailed debug messages
- WebSocket: Verbose low level WebSocket logging
To revert the above logging changes:
$ sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/cockpit.service.d/debug.conf
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl restart cockpit
For more complex hacking on Cockpit beyond the user interface, you need to build the Cockpit binaries locally and install the relevant dependencies. Currently, recent x86_64 architectures of Fedora are most often used for development.
Before attempting to build anything, first make sure the relevant dependencies are installed as described in "Getting the development dependencies" above.
Cockpit uses the autotools and thus there are the familiar ./configure
script and the familar Makefile targets.
But after a fresh clone of the Cockpit sources, you need to prepare
them by running autogen.sh like this:
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ ../autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --enable-debug
As shown, autogen.sh runs 'configure' with the given options, and it
also prepares the build tree by downloading various nodejs dependencies.
When working with a Git clone, it is therefore best to simply always
run ../autogen.sh instead of ../configure.
Creating a build directory puts the output of the build in a separate directory, rather than mixing it in with the sources, which is confusing.
Then you can build the sources and install them, as usual:
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo cp ../src/bridge/cockpit.pam.insecure /etc/pam.d/cockpit
This will install Cockpit and all support files, and will install a simplistic PAM configuration.
Cockpit has a single non-recursive Makefile. You can only run make
from the top-level and it will always rebuild the whole project.
If you prefer to install to a different --prefix and would prefer
that make install not write outside that prefix, then specify the
--enable-prefix-only option to autogen.sh. This will result in an
installation of Cockpit that does not work without further tweaking.
For advanced users only.
You can run unit tests of the current checkout:
$ make check
These should finish very quickly and it is good practice to do it often.
For debugging individual tests, there are compiled binaries in the build directory. For QUnit tests (javascript), you can run
$ ./test-server
which will output a URL to connect to with a browser, such as
http://localhost:8765/dist/base1/test-dbus.html. Adjust the path
for different tests and inspect the results there.
To run the integration tests, see test/README.
You may want to run cockpit-ws under a debugger such as valgrind or gdb. You can run these processes as your own user, although you won't be able to debug all the authentication logic in those cases.
First of all make sure Cockpit is installed correctly. Even though we will be running cockpit-ws from the built sources this still relies on some of the right bits being installed in order for Cockpit to work (ie: PAM stack, UI files, cockpit-bridge, etc.)
This is how you would run cockpit-ws under gdb:
$ export G_DEBUG=fatal-criticals
$ export G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=cockpit-ws,cockpit-wrapper,cockpit-bridge
$ gdb --args ./cockpit-ws --port 10000 --no-tls
And you can run cockpit-ws and cockpit-bridge under valgrind like this:
$ export G_DEBUG=fatal-criticals
$ export G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=cockpit-ws,cockpit-wrapper,cockpit-bridge
$ valgrind --trace-children=yes --trace-children-skip='*unix_chkpwd*' \
./cockpit-ws --port 10000 --no-tls
Note that cockpit-session and cockpit-bridge will run from the installed prefix, rather than your build tree.
While running Firefox or Chrome on your Linux or Mac development machine
may be easy, some people find it harder to test Internet Explorer. To
use the following method you need access to the windows-8 testing
image. This image cannot be freely distributed for licensing reasons.
Make sure you have the virt-viewer package installed on your Linux
machine. And then run the following from the Cockpit checkout directory:
$ test/vm-run --network windows-8
If the image is not yet downloaded, it'll take a while to download and you'll see progress on the command line. A screen will pop up and Windows will boot. Various command lines will show up once Windows has started. Ignore or minimize them, before starting Internet Explorer.
Type the following into Internet Explorer's address bar to access Cockpit running on your development machine:
https://10.111.112.1:9090