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Frontend-only development environment

If you want to only make changes on the UI, you don't need a backend running from source. You can user the docker-compose install with a few customizations.

Prerequisites​

  • Node.js (any recent version should work; we use 20.x to build)
  • Make (again, any recent version should work)
  • Docker and Docker Compose
info

Depending on platform, some native dependencies might be required. On macOS, run brew install node@20, and for Docker brew install --cask docker

Instructions​

  1. Clone the git repo from https://github.com/goauthentik/authentik.

  2. In the cloned repository, follow the docker-compose installation instructions here.

  3. Add the following entry to your .env file:

    AUTHENTIK_IMAGE=ghcr.io/goauthentik/dev-server
    AUTHENTIK_TAG=gh-next
    AUTHENTIK_OUTPOSTS__CONTAINER_IMAGE_BASE=ghcr.io/goauthentik/dev-%(type)s:gh-next
    AUTHENTIK_LOG_LEVEL=debug

    This will cause authentik to use the beta images.

  4. Add this volume mapping to your compose file.

    services:
        # [...]
        server:
            # [...]
            volumes:
                - ./web:/web
                - ./local.env.yml:/local.env.yml

    This makes the local web files and the config file available to the authentik server.

  5. Run docker compose up -d to apply those changes to your containers.

  6. cd web

  7. Run npm i and then npm run watch to start the build process.

You can now access authentik on http://localhost:9000 (or https://localhost:9443).

You might also want to complete the initial setup under /if/flow/initial-setup/.