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Dev launch

Audience. Contributor — anyone running condash from source instead of an installer.

When to read this. You cloned the repo, want to run the dashboard against your local code, and need to know which make target does what.

One-time install

git clone https://github.com/vcoeur/condash.git
cd condash
make install

make install is just npm install — electron-rebuild then fires from the package's postinstall hook, rebuilding native modules against the bundled Electron's Node ABI. That distinction matters when you're debugging a failed rebuild: re-running npm install re-runs it; nothing in the Makefile does.

The rebuild step is the one that fails on a missing C/C++ toolchain — see Contributing — prerequisites for the per-OS package list.

The watch loop

make dev

make dev runs three things concurrently:

  • dev:main — esbuild in --watch mode, rebundling src/main/ and the preload on every save.
  • dev:renderer — vite, serving the renderer at localhost:5600 with hot module reload.
  • dev:electron — electron, opening a single BrowserWindow against the dev URL once both the port and the main bundle are ready.

There is no typechecker in the loop. esbuild strips types without checking them, so a type error will not stop make dev — run npm run typecheck (tsc --noEmit over both tsconfigs) yourself, or let CI catch it.

Renderer edits hot-reload. Main / preload edits are rebundled but need the window reloaded to take effect: Ctrl+Shift+R (View → Reload window). Note that Ctrl+R is not reload here — that accelerator is given to View → Show Resources, which is more useful day to day.

If port 5600 is in use, make kill frees it. The production preview served by vite preview uses 5601; both are strictPort, so a busy port fails loudly rather than silently sliding to the next one.

Tests and gates

The other half of the loop:

Target What it does
make test Build, then run the Playwright suite. Headless by default — the runner wraps the suite in a throwaway Xvfb display so no window ever steals your focus.
make test-headless Same thing, named explicitly.
make test-visible Build and run with the window visible (CONDASH_TEST_HEADED=1).
make test-unit The vitest unit suite, no build needed.
make deadcode knip — fails on dead files, dead/unlisted deps, and duplicate exports.
make typecheck tsc --noEmit over main and renderer.
make format Prettier over src/.

A direct npx playwright test that skips the wrapper is aborted by a global-setup guard before any window opens — that guard is deliberate, not an obstacle to route around.

--no-sandbox and the sandbox toggle

make dev runs Electron with --no-sandbox to avoid per-worktree chrome-sandbox ownership fixes. The dev window only loads localhost:5600 and local file:// URLs — the threat surface is local-only.

If you want the sandbox on while developing, drop --no-sandbox from dev:electron in package.json and then, once per worktree:

sudo chown root node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 node_modules/electron/dist/chrome-sandbox

macOS and Windows are unaffected — the sandbox there does not require the SUID step.

See also

  • Contributing — full clone-to-PR workflow including testing and style.
  • CLI — the runtime command-line surface, useful once you have a build to drive.