Step by step instruction on getting a full Whimsy test environment up and running on macOS. Not all steps are required for every tool, but steps common to many tools are included here, and additional steps required for specific tools are linked at the bottom of these instructions. See also the general DEVELOPMENT.md configuration notes.
💫 New! For a simpler way to setup a macOS machine, please check out the setupmymac script, which automates configuring and keeping updated a local Whimsy instance.
Homebrew is a package manager for macOS, which is used to install other tools. Follow the instructions from brew.sh. You might have to change shells if you are using csh. Bash and zsh work fine. Be sure to read the Homebrew prerequisites; you may need part(s) of Apple's XCode.
Verify minimum version installed using:
$ brew --version
Homebrew 2.1.16
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 274de; last commit 2019-11-12)
Update using:
$ brew update
Much of Whimsy is written in ruby. Versions of macOS prior to 10.15 (Catalina) include an outdated version of ruby.
Verify your current ruby version:
$ ruby -v
ruby 2.6.3p62 (2019-04-16 revision 67580) [universal.x86_64-darwin19]
You need at least version 2.4.1 to match the currently deployed Whimsy server.
If you don't see 2.3.1 or later, run hash -r
and try again. If you still need
to update your ruby, proceed using one of the common ruby version managers:
rbenv (known to work), or rvm.
If using rbenv, install:
$ brew install rbenv
$ cd /srv/whimsy && rbenv install
$ rbenv init
Follow directions to ensure rbenv is setup in your shell(s), and double-check your ruby version.
Note the PATH changes that rbenv init -
configures; you'll need to duplicate it in your httpd conf later.
To use this globally when invoked through rbenv shims, you can use rbenv global $VERSION
to set that where $VERSION
is the version in /srv/whimsy/.ruby-version
.
[TODO: describe how to set .ruby-version]
To set this system-wide, you can link the specific versions of ruby
and gem
in rbenv to /usr/local/bin
like so:
ln -s /usr/local/bin/ruby $HOME/.rbenv/versions/2.5.5/bin/ruby
ln -s /usr/local/bin/gem $HOME/.rbenv/versions/2.5.5/bin/gem
Install:
$ brew install node
$ npm install -g npm
Verify:
$ node -v
v12.12.0
$ npm -v
6.11.3
If you don't see v6 or higher, run hash -r
and try again. If you previously
installed node via brew, you may need to run brew upgrade node
instead.
There are a couple of scripts that require the Puppeteer node module. Installing this is optional, as the scripts are currently only used for cron jobs.
npm install -g puppeteer
To enable easy access to the module, define the following environment variable:
export NODE_PATH=$(npm root -g)
For example this may produce
NODE_PATH="/usr/local/lib/node_modules"
Note: on Ubuntu, it looks as though the default is /usr/lib/node_modules
Depending on whether or not you have a GitHub account (Apache committer setup), use GitHub Desktop or run one of the following:
git clone git@github.com:apache/whimsy.git
git clone https://github.com/apache/whimsy.git
git clone https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/whimsy.git
The first command makes things easier if you want to push to the GitHub clone
and avoid the dual authentication each time. The third command is for pushing
to the asf hosted clone. This only establishes the origin
. You can add
other remotes via commands like:
git remote add github git@github.com:apache/whimsy.git
git remote add asf https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/whimsy.git
Establish a link to this repository in a known location. First instructions for macOS version < 10.15 (Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, ...):
cd whimsy
sudo mkdir /srv
sudo ln -s `pwd` /srv/whimsy
Alternate instructions for macOS version >= 10.15 (Catalina):
sudo mkdir /var/whimsy
echo -e 'srv\t/var/whimsy' | sudo tee -a /etc/synthetic.conf
Reboot the machine, then:
cd whimsy
sudo ln -s `pwd` /srv/whimsy
Note: if you had previously created a /srv directory and it goes missing when you upgrade to Catalina, the previous contents can be found in "/Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Security".
Install:
cd /srv/whimsy
bundle install
Verify:
$ gem list
$ bundler -v
Bundler version 1.17.2
Notes:
- If bundler is not installed, you may need to run
sudo gem install bundler
. If this doesn't work, trysudo gem install bundler -n /usr/local/bin
in order to install bundler outside of/usr/bin
- If you get
bundler's executable "bundle" conflicts with /usr/local/bin/bundle Overwrite the executable? [yN]
, respond withy
(twice!) - Some tools may need a
bundle install
run for additional gems. Simply change directory to the tool you wish to develop, and runbundle install
in that directory. If you want to install all of the dendencies for all of the whimsy tools, runrake update
in the top whimsy directory. - You may have trouble installing due to the dependency on nokogiri. There are
issues with its dependencies. This page suggests some workarounds:
sparklemotion/nokogiri#1483
The simplest solution may be
xcode-select --install
unless you know that's already configured.
Many Whimsy modules use Apache's LDAP directory. Install:
$ cd /srv/whimsy
$ sudo ruby -I lib -r whimsy/asf -e "ASF::LDAP.configure"
Verify:
$ ldapsearch -x -LLL uid=rubys cn
dn: uid=rubys,ou=people,dc=apache,dc=org
cn: Sam Ruby
Notes:
- See DEVELOPMENT.md for more LDAP configuration.
- To pick up the latest code, the above needs to be run from the directory
you issued the
git clone
command. Alternately, provide the full path to thewhimsy/lib
directory on theASF::LDAP.configure
command. - Periodically the infrastructure team reconfigures LDAP servers, which may require this command to be run again.
- Alternatives to running this command can be found in step 4 of DEVELOPMENT.md
- The
ldapsearch
command is the standard LDAP utility on macOS.
Note as an alternative to configuring and starting the version of httpd which is provided with macOS, you can install a separate version using Homebrew. Those instructions can be found in an older version of these instructions, specifically, the Install Homebrew, Install Apache httpd, Install passenger, Configure whimsy.local, Complete Apache configuration, Make whimsy.local an alias for your machine, and Optional: forward whimsy.local traffic to port 8080 steps.
Running Whimsy tools locally depends on httpd. Apple provides a copy of httpd that you can configure and start.
Install:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
Verify:
$ curl localhost
<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>
Notes:
sudo lsof -i:80
may be helpful should you find that another process already has port 80 open.sudo apachectl restart
is how you restart apache; launchctl itself is for controlling what processes automatically start at startup.- If
curl
givesConnection refused
then try kicking httpd:sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl stop
sudo /usr/sbin/httpd
- If it works, then press CTRL-C and
sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start
- If it gave you
AH00526: Syntax error on line 20 of /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-mpm.conf
then you may need to delete the LockFile section.
- If it works, then press CTRL-C and
First, lock down Apache so that it can only be accessed from your localhost (using either IPv4 or IPv6). As you will be configuring Apache httpd to be running with your ID, this will prevent external hackers from exploiting that code to update your filesystem and do other nasty things.
Edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
using sudo and your favorite text editor.
Locate the first line that says Require all granted
. This should be around
line 263 at the end of the section Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
or similar
Replace that line with the following four lines:
<RequireAny>
Require ip 127.0.0.1
Require ip ::1
</RequireAny>
Find the next occurrence of Require all granted
. It should now be around
line 386 in the section Directory "/Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables
or similar
Replace it with Require all denied
.
Now go back to the top of the file and search for User
. Replace the first
_www
with your local user id. This may be different than your ASF availid --
that's OK. Your local user id is the response to whoami
.
Replace the second _www
with staff
(that's the group name).
Save your changes.
Restart Apache httpd using sudo apachectl restart
.
Verify that you can continue to access the server by re-issuing the following command:
$ curl localhost
<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>
Edit /etc/hosts
using sudo and your favorite text editor.
Find either line that contains the word localhost
and add whimsy.local
to
it. For example, if you chose what is likely to be the final line in the file
and update it, it would look like this:
::1 localhost whimsy.local
Save your changes.
Verify that you can access the server using this new alias:
$ curl whimsy.local
<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>
Follow the Installing Passenger + Apache on Mac OS X instructions, which are summaried below:.
Install:
$ brew install passenger
$ brew info passenger
For the second step (brew info passenger
), you will need to
follow the instructions -- which essentially is to copy a few lines to
a specified location, typically /etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf
.
If your ruby is installed in /usr/local/bin
, change the last line to
PassengerDefaultRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby
Likewise, if you used rbenv
to manage your ruby install, point to that location instead. This should be $HOME/.rbenv/shims/ruby
.
Optional: add PassengerUser _www
and PassengerGroup _www
lines if you would like your passenger applications to run under the web user.
Restart the server:
sudo apachectl restart
Verify:
Check that the server information includes 'Phusion_Passenger':
$ curl --head whimsy.local
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 19:37:12 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.41 (Unix) Phusion_Passenger/6.0.4
Content-Location: index.html.en
Vary: negotiate
TCN: choice
Last-Modified: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 05:05:59 GMT
ETag: "2d-5913a76187bc0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 45
Content-Type: text/html
This may fail on High Sierra with a We cannot safely call it or ignore it in
the fork() child process. Crashing
instead. message in your /var/log/apache/error.log
file. If so, do the following:
cp /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/
Edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
and add the following to
EnvironmentVariables/Dict
:
<key>OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY</key>
<string>YES</string>
Finally:
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
N.B. Because of System Integrity Protection (SIP), it's not possible to edit files under /System. So the change is made to a copy. However the original location is baked into apachectl which is also protected by SIP. This means apachectl ignores the change. A work-round for this is to create an updated copy of apachectl somewhere further up the path.
Once again, Edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
using sudo and your favorite text editor.
Uncomment out the following lines:
LoadModule proxy_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_wstunnel_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy_wstunnel.so
LoadModule speling_module libexec/apache2/mod_speling.so
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule authnz_ldap_module libexec/apache2/mod_authnz_ldap.so
LoadModule ldap_module libexec/apache2/mod_ldap.so
LoadModule expires_module libexec/apache2/mod_expires.so
LoadModule cgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_cgi.so
Add the following line:
LDAPVerifyServerCert Off
Also from the root of your whimsy git checkout, make a /srv/cache
directory
owned by you, and establish a symbolic link to your whimsy git clone directory:
sudo mkdir -p /srv/cache
sudo chown `id -un`:`id -gn` /srv/cache
sudo ln -s `pwd` /srv/whimsy
Copy whimsy vhost definition to your apache2 configuration:
sudo cp /srv/whimsy/config/whimsy.conf /private/etc/apache2/other
Note: if you reside outside North America you may wish to use the EU LDAP server by changing the references in the whimsy.conf file from ldaps://ldap-us.apache.org:636/ to ldaps://ldap-eu.apache.org:636/
Restart Apache httpd using sudo apachectl restart
.
Verify:
- Static content: Visit http://whimsy.local/. You should see the whimsy home page.
- CGI scripts: Visit http://whimsy.local/test.cgi. You should see a list of environment variables. Compare with test.cgi on whimsy.
- Passenger/Rack applications: Visit http://whimsy.local/racktest. You should see a list of environment variables. Compare with racktest on whimsy.
Compare the PATH
values with your local (command line) environment.
Various whimsy tools will make use of a number of commands (svn
, pdftk
)
and it is important that these tools (and the correct version of each) can
be found on the PATH
defined to the Apache httpd web server. If you find
you need to adjust this, edit the SetEnv PATH
line in
/etc/apache2/other/whimsy.conf
, restart the server and verify the path
again.
Every mail delivery system appears to be different. Once configured,
sendmail
works fine on whimsy-vm6.apache.org
. Others may require
passwords or may throttle the rate at which emails can be sent.
The one option that appears to work for everybody is GMail.
Create a ~/.whimsy
file, and add the following content:
---
:sendmail:
delivery_method: smtp
address: smtp.gmail.com
port: 587
domain: apache.org
user_name: username
password: password
authentication: plain
enable_starttls_auto: true
Verify this works:
$ ruby whimsy/tools/testmail.rb
Note Gmail will just be used as a delivery mechanism, you can still
use a different address (such as your @apache.org email address) as
the from address. The domain
above should match the host portion of
the from address.
Should your Apache user id differ from your local user id, either specify your ASF user id as the first parameter to the testmail.rb program, or set the USER environment variable to your ASF user id before running this script.
If this fails, check your email for a response from Google. You may need to approve this application.
Information on other ways to configure sending mail can be found at DEVELOPMENT.md step 6.
Edit ~/.whimsy
and add a list of checked out ASF repositories that may
be referenced by whimsy tools. For example:
:svn:
- /Users/clr/apache/foundation
- /Users/clr/apache/documents
- /Users/clr/apache/committers
Note: wildcards are permitted. The above can more economically be expressed as:
:svn:
- /Users/clr/apache/*
Verify by visiting http://whimsy.local/status/svn.
If you have at least one entry that ends with a *
, and the
parent directory exists and is writable, this tool
will be able to do a check-out for you.
Note that some checkouts (and possibly even some updates) may take longer than the Apache httpd timeout, which defaults to 60 seconds, and if so, this tool won't automatically update when the operation completes. Should that happen, simply refresh the page to see the changes.
While CGI scripts and static pages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) can be changed and are immediately available to be served without restarting the server, Passenger/Rack applications need to be restarted to pick up changes. To make this easier, whimsy has a small tool that will watch for file system changes and restart applications that might be affected on the receipt of the next request.
To have this tool launch automatically, copy whimsy/config/toucher.plist
to
'~/Library/LaunchAgents/' and have launchctl load it:
mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cp /srv/whimsy/config/toucher.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/toucher.plist
Note: Adjust the path to ruby
in toucher.plist
if necessary. If you
make this change after you have loaded the script, unload then reload it.
To verify that it is working, touch a file in an application, and verify
that tmp/restart.txt
has been updated. Example:
$ ls -l whimsy/www/board/agenda/tmp/restart.txt
$ touch whimsy/www/board/agenda/README.md
$ ls -l whimsy/www/board/agenda/tmp/restart.txt
A number of individual tools require additional configuration:
When things go wrong, either check whimsy_error.log
and error_log
in
either /usr/local/var/log/httpd/
or /var/log/apache2/
. The location depends on how you have installed httpd.