To get up and running with a local Backstage to evaluate it, let's clone it off of GitHub and run an initial build. First make sure that you have at least node version 12 installed locally.
# Start from your local development folder
git clone [email protected]:spotify/backstage.git
cd backstage
# Fetch our dependencies and run an initial build
yarn install
yarn tsc
yarn buildPhew! Now you have a local repository that's ready to run and to add any open source contributions into.
We are now going to launch two things: an example Backstage frontend app, and an example Backstage backend that the frontend talks to. You are going to need two terminal windows, both starting from the Backstage project root.
In the first window, run
cd packages/backend
yarn startThat starts up a backend instance on port 7000.
In the other window, we will first populate the catalog with some nice mock data to look at, and then launch the frontend. These commands are run from the project root, not inside the backend directory.
yarn lerna run mock-data
yarn startThat starts up the frontend on port 3000, and should automatically open a browser window showing it.
Congratulations! That should be it. Let us know how it went on discord, file issues for any feature or plugin suggestions, or bugs you have, and feel free to contribute!
The value of Backstage grows with every new plugin that gets added. Here is a collection of tutorials that will guide you through setting up and extending an instance of Backstage with your own plugins.