Problem building runtime code

owen.campbell · April 8, 2025, 7:27am

Has anyone else tried following the instructions for hacking on/contributing to the runtime code?

anvil-works/anvil-runtime/blob/master/doc/HACKING.md

# Developing the Anvil Runtime and App Server

## Overview

The Runtime and App Server are split up into a few modules. Broadly, client code is in Javascript; server code is in Clojure; and downlink code is in Python.

* The `client/` directory contains client-side code, written in Javascript and HTML. We depend on a few libraries, with particular emphasis on the [Skulpt](https://skulpt.org) Python-to-Javascript compiler.

* The `database/` directory contains schemas for the Postgres database, including a Clojure library for performing migrations and database setup.

* The `downlink/` directory contains the code that runs your apps' server-side Python code.

* The `packaging/` directory contains scripts for building the App Server as a standalone package.

* The `services/` directory contains Javascript and Python source code for Anvil's "Services", add-in components that provide 

* The `server/` directory contains the server-side Clojure code. This is split into two projects:

  * `server/core/` is the Anvil Runtime library, which is used both by the standalone App Server and by the (non-open-source) Anvil hosted platform which can be found at [anvil.works](https://anvil.works)

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I’m hitting problems attempting the second step - building the client. I’ve logged an issue:

github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime

Cannot run build script

opened 01:13PM - 07 Apr 25 UTC

meatballs

I'm trying to run `npm run build` (from within the `client` directory) but it's …failing because of https://github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime/blob/9c20e9cad8fa82eff0e1d9dc4a279d5fcfd0a7ef/client/js/tsconfig.json#L2 which seems to point to a file it's expecting to find in the parent directory of the repo itself. Also, if I follow the instructions at https://github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime/blob/master/tests/README.md, I get errors as the Dockerfile in there refers to similar files that don't seem to exist anywhere. What's the intention here?

meredydd · April 8, 2025, 9:51am

Oh, bother - yes, that needs fixing! Moved to Bug Reports.

Update: I’m informed this will be fixed in the next App Server release! Meanwhile there’s a workaround here