Building from source

Installing dependencies

You will need to first install the following dependencies if you don't already have them on your machine:

To use the scripts set up in this repo:

• Just
  • Just is used to execute scripts set up in the Justfile.
  • To install it see Packages, for example cargo install just or brew install just

To run the Convex CLI:

• Node.js
  • Make sure you have the version specified in .nvmrc
  • We recommend installing Node.js via nvm.
  • Run nvm use from the root of the repo.

To build the backend from source:

• Cargo
  • The convex local backend is written in Rust. Cargo is the build system.
  • We recommend installing Cargo via rustup.
• The Rust nightly version specified in rust-toolchain
  • Assuming you installed Rust/Cargo with rustup, this will install automatically.
• Rush
  • npm clean-install --prefix scripts
  • We manage the packages in a monorepo using Rush.
• Convex JavaScript dependencies
  • just rush install

Building from source

Build and run the local backend from the source in this repo:

just run-local-backend

Provisioning a demo app locally

This example will go through running the backend with the included demo project.

1. Start the backend

Run the backend

If this fails with an error "persisted db metadata ..." you might need to erase the local database, in root directory run rm convex_local_backend.sqlite3.

2. Develop against the backend

The Convex CLI watches for changes in the application source code and pushes the code to backend.

To make the local backend run the included demo project, do:

cd npm-packages/demos/tutorial
npm i
just convex dev

The convex script in Justfile automatically adds appropriate --url and --admin-key flags to point the CLI to the local backend.

To run the client web application you can run the demo Vite server via:

npm run dev:frontend

Note that unlike the hosted Convex workflow, we don't want to run the dev:backend command since convex dev is already running.

The following CLI commands may be useful when interacting with your backend:

• just convex data - Lists tables in your Convex deployment
• just convex env - Allows you to list/set/update/delete environment variables
• just convex logs - Streams out log lines to the terminal (it includes all successful executions if --success is passed in)
• just convex import - Allows you to import tables
• just convex export - Allows you to export tables

If you're using both the local backend and the hosted cloud platform, make sure to run npx convex dev or just convex dev before you start testing your client. The dev command will take care of updating your .env.local file with the correct CONVEX_URL.