Synchronous

Synchronous is an easy-to-use collaborative workspace app. You can write text together, draw things together, and share files with each other. Stop fumbling around with sharing and visiting different sites for different tools. Get working with your teammates within seconds.

Usage

Visit https://synchronous.codes.

Setting up a development environment

Cloning the repository

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/pinkslp/Synchronous.git

Retrieving new changes from the repository

git pull origin main
git submodule update --recursive

Installation

Download and install Docker (https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop).

Edit your hosts file (/etc/hosts on Linux/Mac, C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows) to include the following lines:

# Synchronous
127.0.0.1 synchronous.localhost
127.0.0.1 tusd.synchronous.localhost
127.0.0.1 api.synchronous.localhost
127.0.0.1 etherpad.synchronous.localhost
127.0.0.1 spacedeck.synchronous.localhost

This allows you to access Synchronous and all necessary other services on http://synchronous.localhost and its various subdomains, which allows for SameSite cookies.

Start up Docker containers (the initial container build may take a long time!)

docker compose up

Code changes for React and Django will be automatically detected, and the respective servers will automatically restart. However, any changes that would normally require a manual restart of the server would require you to stop all containers using Ctrl+C and re-run the command.

Deploying

Frontend

cd Frontend && npm run build will build a production-ready version of the frontend React app. This can be deployed using Netlify.

To prevent a 404 when refreshing a page that is not the root, you must follow the steps in https://answers.netlify.com/t/support-guide-direct-links-to-my-single-page-app-spa-dont-work/126.

Backend

Clone the repository (see Cloning the repository).

Then, start the production-ready Docker containers using the following command:

docker-compose -f production.yml up -d

HTTPS must be enabled.

Troubleshooting

I need to add a new dependency

React dependencies can be installed as usual using npm install ... --save within the Frontend/ directory.

Django dependencies must be added to requirements.txt.

After installing, restart the containers.

If it still doesn't work, enter the command line for the container using Docker Desktop and run the installation command from the container itself.

A docker container is not showing the changes I made

Try rebuilding the container using docker compose up SERVICE_NAME --build where SERVICE_NAME is the name of the service whose container you want to rebuild. The services can be found in docker-compose.yml (e.g. nginx, backend, frontend, etc.).