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Quick Start

• npm run build builds the production version of the browser application
• npm run start serves the application at https://localhost:5000 over HTTP/2 (See the one-time “Generating HTTPS Certificates” below)

Development Set-up

macOS

Requirements

• Node.js 12+ to compile the browser application and serve it in development mode
• mkcert (Optional) to generate HTTPS certificates

First Time

Generating HTTPS Certificates

It’s likely in production that your application will be served over HTTPS. While standing up an HTTP server on localhost is easy for development, browsers behave differently in subtle ways when serving content over HTTPS. Thus it’s important to account for this in development.

The following uses the open-source mkcert utility to create self-signed certificates used to configure an HTTPS for localhost along with a trusted certificate authority so your browser doesn’t warn you each time. mkcert just automates the complex process of generating certs. You can use other tools to generate the keys. Self-signing and one-off certificate authorities are not suitable for a production application.

• brew install mkcert installs mkcert
• mkcert -install initializes mkcert and adds a trusted certificate authority to the Keychain. Caution: This is a potential security risk.
• mkcert localhost creates two *.pem files in the current directory that should not be checked into version control. (See .gitignore.) These files are referenced in package.json to configure the primary web server (defaults to port 5000) and rollup.config.js for live reload during development (defaults to port 35729). If you’ve used a different tool to create your keys, you might need to adjust these paths.

Ongoing

• npm run dev listens for source file changes and hot reloads the application