RFID Tracker

Get started

1. Install VSCode.

2. When you open the repo, you should see the notification Do you want to install the recommended extensions from Microsoft for this repository?. Click Install.

3. A new notification should open: Folder contains a Dev Container configuration file. Reopen folder to develop in a container (learn more).. Press Reopen in Container.

4. You should see Running the onCreateCommand from devcontainer.json... in the terminal. This will take a minute or two. Lean back and relax.

5. After a while, you'll see dev: command not found in the terminal. Wait for a minute, and if it doesn't disappear, run direnv: Reset and reload environment.

6. VSCode should restart. Congrats, you have won!

7. (optional) If you don't have a local database yet, run the scripts: init task. It'll create a new database and a user for you.

Development server

The development server should start automatically. If it dies, or you want to restart it, press Ctrl+Shift+B. You might need to press Enter afterwards.

Tip

If you need to run migrations, restarting the dev server is probably the easiest way to do it.

Daily operations

Most common operations are available from Tasks: Run Task. They come in three flavours:

1. scripts: these perform common tasks. You'll run them the most often They are also available in the terminal.

2. packages: these build parts of the project. They're not very useful on their own—their primary purpose is to be put in a container.

3. containers: these build & upload docker containers to Docker Hub.

Scripts

To create a new database, run init. It'll set up a new admin user. It's safe to run this command if you already have a database.

The most-used script is makemigrations. it creates migrations (d'oh!). Run it when you change models.py.

If a tutorial, Stack Overflow, etc. asks you to run python manage.py foo bar, run django foo bar instead. This script works from any directory, in contrast to manage.py.

Pitfalls

Pre-commit

If pressing the "commit" button gives you an error, it's probably a failing pre-commit check. Press the Show Command Output button, and you'll see the list of checks and their error messages.

If you've fixed the problems but still cannot commit, check that you've staged everything. Some pre-commit hooks run code formatters, and you need to manually stage their output.

Devcontainers

On first load, you'll see notifications like "cannot find git executable". This is normal. After a while, vscode will restart and those notifications should go away. This might take a minute on first boot.

Direnv

direnv extension fails silently. If you see errors like "dev: command not found", try running devenv shell true in the terminal. It should finish with no errors. If it didn't, then Dmytro broke Nix again.

Terminal will not pick up the new environment until you restart it. You should see a warning sign if direnv wants you to do it.