/discuit

A free and open-source community discussion platform.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptGNU Affero General Public License v3.0AGPL-3.0

Discuit

This is the codebase that powers Discuit, which is an open-source community platform, an alternative to Reddit.

Built with:

  • Go: The backend.
  • React: The frontend.
  • MariaDB: The main datastore.
  • Redis: For transient data.

Getting started

Running locally

To setup a development environment of Discuit on your local computer:

  1. Install Go (1.21 or higher) by following the instructions at go.dev.

  2. Install MariaDB, Redis, Node.js (and NPM). On Ubuntu, for instance, you might have to run the following commands:

    sudo apt update
    
    # Install and start MariaDB
    sudo apt install mariadb-server
    sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
    
    # Install and start Redis
    sudo apt install redis-server
    sudo systemctl start redis.service
    
    # Install Node.js and NPM
    sudo apt install nodejs npm
  3. Create a MariaDB database.

    # Open MariaDB CLI
    mariadb -u root -p --binary-as-hex
    
    # Create a database named discuit (you may use a different name)
    create database discuit;
    
    # Enter exit (or press Ctrl+D) to exit
    exit;
  4. Discuit uses libvips for fast image transformations. Make sure it's installed on your computer. On Ubuntu you can install it with: shell sudo apt install libvips-dev

  5. Clone this repository:

    git clone https://github.com/discuitnet/discuit.git && cd discuit
  6. Create a file named config.yaml in the root directory and copy the contents of config.default.yaml into it. And enter the required config parameters in config.yaml.

  7. Build the frontend and the backend:

    ./build.sh
  8. Run migrations:

    ./discuit -migrate
  9. Start the server:

    ./discuit -serve

After creating an account, you can run ./discuit -make-admin username to make a user an admin of the site.

Note: Do not install the discuit binary using go install or move it somewhere else. It uses files in this repository at runtime and so it should only be run from the root of this repository.

Running with Docker

  1. Build the Docker Image

    docker build -t discuit .
  2. Run the Docker Container

    Note: The following command while having a persistent database, the included config.yaml file is not. You will need to mount the file to the container if you want to persist the configuration.

    docker run -d --name discuit -v discuit-db:/var/lib/mysql -v discuit-redis:/var/lib/redis -v discuit-images:/app/images -p 8080:80 discuit
  3. Accessing Discuit: After the container starts, you can access Discuit by navigating to http://localhost:8080 on your web browser, or to the specific port if you customized the port mapping.

  4. Stopping the Container: When you're done, you can stop the container by running:

    docker stop discuit
  5. Starting the Container Again: To start the container again, use:

    docker start discuit

Source code layout

In the root directory are these directories:

  • core: Contains all the core functionality of the backend.
  • internal: Contains Go packages internal to the project.
  • migrations: Contains the SQL migration files.
  • server: Contains the REST API backend.
  • ui - Contains the React frontend.

Contributing

Discuit is free and open-source software, and you're welcome to contribute to its development.

If you're thinking of working on something substantial, however, (like a major feature) please create an issue, or contact the maintainer, to discuss it before commencing work.

License

Copyright (C) 2024 Previnder

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.