Development

Info

This page will go detail tools and processes around using akk-stack for server development, spire development, etc.

EQEmu Server Development

When akk-stack is installed, it by default uses pre-compiled binaries for those who have no interest in making modifications to the server. This uses stock binaries that are available via the release pipeline here and can be browsed in Spire's release analytics

Compiling

Info

Compiling for server development within akk-stack has some extra features that are available to you out of the box that will save developers a tremendous amount of time.

If you are interested in compiling your own binaries, you can do so by following the instructions detailed below.

Initialize Development Build

Initialize your development build by using make init-dev-build when shelled into the home directory of the server container.

cd ~/ && make init-dev-build

What this does

• Initialize the build environment for you and set up the necessary tools to compile the server. This includes setting up the necessary dependencies, and setting up the necessary environment variables to compile the server.
• It uses a specific version of Perl that is known to work with the server, the eqemu-server container image is already pre-baked with all of the sane defaults for this to work flawlessly out of the box. It is decoupled from system Perl and is not affected by system Perl updates.
• It disables compilation optimizations and enables debugging symbols to be able to debug the server effectively and speeds up compilation tremendously because we're not doing optimization passes in the compiler.
• Ccache is also used to speed up compilation times, and the build is done using the Ninja build system. This is also pre-baked into the eqemu-server container image and you don't have to do any configuration beyond running the make command.
• Uses the gold linker which is known to be faster than the default linker that comes with the compiler.
• Uses the Clang compiler which is known to be faster than the default GCC compiler that comes with the compiler.
• Uses Ninja as the build system which is known to be faster than the default make build system that comes with the compiler.

> Initializing EQEmu Server Build

cd ~/code && \
    git submodule init && \
    git submodule update && \
    rm -rf build && \
    mkdir -p build && \
    cd build && \
    cmake -DEQEMU_BUILD_LOGIN=ON \
        -DEQEMU_BUILD_TESTS=ON \
        -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache \
        -DPERL_LIBRARY=/opt/eqemu-perl/lib/5.32.1/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/CORE/libperl.so \
        -DPERL_EXECUTABLE=/opt/eqemu-perl/bin/perl \
        -DPERL_INCLUDE_PATH=/opt/eqemu-perl/lib/5.32.1/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/CORE/ \
        -DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS=-fuse-ld=gold \
        -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO:STRING="-O0 -g -DNDEBUG -Os -Wno-everything" -G "Ninja" ..
-- The C compiler identification is Clang 14.0.6
-- The CXX compiler identification is Clang 14.0.6
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
... truncated output

Running the Build

akk-stack comes configured with a very simple alias that can be used anywhere in the shell to invoke the build, simply by typing n

n

Under the hood, this is just a simple alias that changes to the build directory and runs the build using the ninja build system.

alias n='cd ~/code/build && ninja -j$(expr $(nproc) - 2)'

You will see an output that resembles the following:

eqemu@66636230306d:~/code/build$ n
[90/130] Building CXX object zone/CMakeFiles/zone.dir/zone_base_data.cpp.o

Spire Development

Spire is a web-based content editor and server management tool that is used to manage the server. akk-stack is setup the best to be able to develop and test Spire in a local environment.

In the .env file, set SPIRE_DEV=true and make sure ENV=development is set.

On your Docker host run the following commands:

make down
docker-compose pull
docker-compose build
make up

If you are running the initial installation of akk-stack this will be ran during install, but if you already have akk-stack installed, you can run make init-spire-dev in the eqemu-server container to initialize the development environment for Spire.

Shell into the eqemu-server container via

make bash

And then run

make init-spire-dev

Spire Development Aliases

akk-stack comes with a few aliases that are useful for developing Spire.

• spire Changes to the Spire directory
• spire-be Starts the Spire backend in development mode restarting on file changes
• spire-fe Starts the Spire frontend in development mode restarting on file changes

alias spire='cd ~/server/spire'
alias spire-be='cd ~/server/spire && air'
alias spire-fe='cd ~/server/spire/frontend && npm run dev'