How to setup for development - Windows

[timothycarambat]

From Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm#1346

Description
In case anyone is developing on Windows, this is what I had to do...

yarn setup will not work all the way on windows because yarn setup:envs part fails due to the cp command not existing... but, you can still run yarn setup and then manually copy:

copy ./frontend/.env.example ./frontend/.env
copy ./server/.env.example ./server/.env.development
copy ./collector/.env.example ./collector/.env
copy ./docker/.env.example ./docker/.env
But then you have to run yarn prisma:setup manually, because that part was not reached in yarn setup call, after the failure of yarn setup:envs...

Finally, the NODE_ENV issue.

In all 3 package.json files inside server, client and collector folders I had to change NODE_ENV=development into set NODE_ENV=development &&.

Then in the frontend folder, nothing else was needed.

But, in both server/index.js and collector/index.js files, I added this line on top: process.env.NODE_ENV = process.env.NODE_ENV.trim();. This is because the set change sets the extra space, sadly. Alternatively, setenv may be a solution but I figured adding a single line is less disruptive than adding a whole package...

I was then able to start all three with:
yarn dev:server
yarn dev:frontend
yarn dev:collector

Naturally, these changes must not be pushed in your merge requests...

[ShadowArcanist]

@timothycarambat can I just create a new page on docs and copy paste your message (you sent above)? or is there anything else we have to add to your message ?

[timothycarambat]

There is really nothing new. The only detail is this is for local development and you should not run the app this way for production instances

[yongshengma]

cp command works in my Windows VS Code, so this part is not necessary:

yarn setup will not work all the way on windows because yarn setup:envs part fails due to the cp command not existing... but, you can still run yarn setup and then manually copy:

copy ./frontend/.env.example ./frontend/.env
copy ./server/.env.example ./server/.env.development
copy ./collector/.env.example ./collector/.env
copy ./docker/.env.example ./docker/.env
But then you have to run yarn prisma:setup manually, because that part was not reached in yarn setup call, after the failure of yarn setup:envs...

[timothycarambat]

Are you in WSL or are using some other Linux emulation shell cp is not a valid Powershell command