element-web/README.md

Vector/Web

Vector is a Matrix web client built using the Matrix React SDK (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk).

Getting started

1. Install or update node.js so that your npm is at least at version 2.0.0
2. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/vector-im/vector-web.git
3. Switch to the SDK directory: cd vector-web
4. Install the prerequisites: npm install
5. Start the development builder and a testing server: npm start
6. Wait a few seconds for the initial build to finish.
7. Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/ in your browser to see your newly built Vector.

With npm start, any changes you make to the source files will cause a rebuild so your changes will show up when you refresh.

For production use, run npm run build to build all the necessary files into the vector directory and run your own server.

Development

For simple tweaks, you can work on any of the source files within Vector with the setup above, and your changes will cause an instant rebuild.

However, all serious development on Vector happens on the develop branch. This typically depends on the develop snapshot versions of matrix-react-sdk and matrix-js-sdk too, which isn't expressed in Vector's package.json. To do this, check out the develop branches of these libraries and then use npm link to tell Vector about them:

1. Link the react sdk package into the example: npm link path/to/your/react/sdk
2. Start the development rebuilder in your react SDK directory: npm start

Similarly, you may need to npm link path/to/your/js/sdk in your matrix-react-sdk directory.

If you add or remove any components from the Vector skin, you will need to rebuild the skin's index by running, npm run reskindex.

You may need to run npm i source-map-loader in matrix-js-sdk if you get errors about "Cannot resolve module 'source-map-loader'" due to shortcomings in webpack.

Deployment

Just run npm build and then mount the vector directory on your webserver to actually serve up the app, which is entirely static content.