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Install from Source

This guide is for installing a local development copy of Ghost from source, primarily for the purpose of modifying Ghost core.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, you’ll need these global packages to be installed:

A supported version of Node.js - Ideally installed via nvm
Yarn - to manage all the packages
Docker (ie. Docker Desktop) - to run the MySQL database and other services

Create GitHub fork

First you’ll need to make a fork of the Ghost repository. Click on the fork button right at the top, wait for a copy to be created over on your personal GitHub account, and you should be all set!

Configure repository

The main Ghost repository is a monorepo containing the full Ghost code, including the Admin client and default theme which will also be automatically set up

# First clone Ghost with submodules and make it your working dir
git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:TryGhost/Ghost && cd Ghost

Properly rename your references

If you’re part of the Ghost core team, you don’t need to do this, as you can push straight to TryGhost/Ghost.

# Rename origin to upstream
git remote rename origin upstream

# Add your fork as an origin, editing in <YourUsername>!
git remote add origin git@github.com:<YourUsername>/Ghost.git

Run setup & installation

# Only ever run this once
yarn setup

The setup task will install dependencies, initialise the database, set up git hooks, and initialise submodules.

Start Ghost

# Run Ghost in development mode
yarn dev

Ghost is now running at http://localhost:2368/ - Ghost Admin lives at http://localhost:2368/ghost/

Stay up to date

When your working copies become out of date due to upstream changes, this is the command that brings you back up to the latest main

# Update EVERYTHING
yarn main

That’s it, you’re done with the install! The rest of this guide is about working with your new development copy of Ghost.

Dev Commands

When running locally there are a number development utility commands which come in handy for running tests, building packages, and other helpful tasks.

Running Ghost

The most commonly used commands for running the core codebase locally

# Default way of running Ghost in development mode
# Builds admin files on start & then watches for changes
yarn dev

# Ignores admin changes
yarn dev:ghost

# Ignores server changes
yarn dev:admin

# Run Ghost, Admin and the Portal dev server
yarn dev --portal

Database tools

Ghost uses its own tool called knex-migrator to manage database migrations.

# Wipe the database
yarn knex-migrator reset

# Populate a fresh database
yarn knex-migrator init

Building Ghost from source

From the top-level directory of the monorepo, run

yarn archive

This will produce a tarball archive called ghost-<version>.tgz, which can be installed with Ghost-CLI’s --archive flag.

Server Tests

Tests run with SQLite. To use MySQL, prepend commands with NODE_ENV=testing-mysql

# Run unit tests
yarn test:unit

# Run acceptance tests
yarn test:acceptance

# Run regression tests
yarn test:regression

# Run a single test
yarn test:single path/to/test.js

# Run a folder of tests
yarn test:single test/unit/helpers

# Run all tests
yarn test:all

# Make sure your code doesn't suck
yarn lint

Client Tests

Client tests should always be run inside the ghost/admin directory. Any time you have yarn dev running the client tests will be available at http://localhost:4200/tests

# Run all tests in Chrome + Firefox
ember test

# Run all tests, leave results open, and watch for changes
ember test --server

# Run tests where `describe()` or `it()` matches supplied argument
# Note: Case sensitive
ember test -f 'gh-my-component'

# Run all tests in Chrome only
ember test --launch=chrome

# Most useful test comment for continuous local development
# Targets specific test of area being worked on
# Only using Chrome to keep resource usage minimal
ember test -s -f 'Acceptance: Settings - General' --launch=chrome

Troubleshooting

Some common Ghost development problems and their solutions

ERROR: (EADDRINUSE) Cannot start Ghost
This error means that Ghost is already running, and you need to stop it.

ERROR: ENOENT
This error means that the mentioned file doesn’t exist.

ERROR Error: Cannot find module
Install did not complete. Run yarn fix.

Error: Cannot find module ‘./build/default/DTraceProviderBindings’
You switched node versions. Run yarn fix.

ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat ‘path/to/favicon.ico’ at Error (native)
Your admin client has not been built. Run yarn dev.

TypeError: Cannot read property ’tagName’ of undefined
You can’t run ember test at the same time as yarn dev. Wait for tests to finish before continuing and wait for the “Build successful” message before loading admin.

yarn.lock conflicts
When rebasing a feature branch it’s possible you’ll get conflicts on yarn.lock because there were dependency changes in both main and <feature-branch>.

Note what dependencies have changed in package.json
(Eg. dev-1 was added and dev dep dev-2 was removed)
git reset HEAD package.json yarn.lock - unstages the files
git checkout -- package.json yarn.lock - removes local changes
yarn add dev-1 -D - re-adds the dependency and updates yarn.lock
yarn remove dev-2 - removes the dependency and updates yarn.lock
git add package.json yarn.lock - re-stage the changes
git rebase --continue - continue with the rebase

It’s always more reliable to let yarn auto-generate the lockfile rather than trying to manually merge potentially incompatible changes.