Setting Up Binder Development

Follow these instructions to get Binder running locally on your computer for testing and development!

This guide assumes you are familiar with creating folders in your operating system's terminal and have git installed (Run git --version from the command line to check)

Fork and clone the Binder repository on Github

Fork Binder using the "Fork" Button in the top right of the Github screen, and clone your forked repository git clone https://github.com/link_to/your_binder

Set up dependencies for Binder development

Binder uses Docker to manage dependencies and make setting up your development environment easier! If you don't already have docker on your computer, visit https://www.docker.com/ to download Docker Desktop.

Then, before the first time running Binder you need to build the Binder Docker image that includes all of the code and dependencies required to run Binder using docker-compose build.

Run Binder Locally

Once the Binder Docker image has been built, start the Binder image by running

docker-compose up --watch

After a few seconds, Binder should be running at http://localhost:3000/!

Run Other Rails Commands

Occasionally, we want to run other commands related to Binder for testing (e.g. rails console). You can run any traditional rails command by running

docker-compose exec web COMMAND_NAME.

For MacOS or Linux users, it may be worthwhile to alias docker-compose exec web since you may need to use it a lot. To do this:

1. vim ~/.bashrc to edit your terminal preferences
2. At the bottom of the file (press 'i' to edit the file), add alias binder='docker-compose exec web
3. Exit the file by typing Esc + ':' + 'w' + 'q' + Enter
4. source ~/.bashrc to load the changes to your current terminal session.
5. Now just run binder COMMAND_NAME to run commands!