Skip to main content

Full development environment

Requirements​

  • Python 3.11
  • poetry, which is used to manage dependencies, and can be installed with pip install poetry
  • Go 1.18
  • PostgreSQL (any recent version will do)
  • Redis (any recent version will do)
  • Node 16 (or later)

Services Setup​

For PostgreSQL and Redis, you can use the docker-compose file in scripts/. You can also use a native install, if you prefer.

Backend Setup​

poetry shell # Creates a python virtualenv, and activates it in a new shell
poetry install # Install all required dependencies, including development dependencies
info

Depending on platform, some native dependencies might be required. On macOS, run brew install libxmlsec1 libpq, and for the CLI tools brew install postgresql redis node@18

To configure authentik to use the local databases, we need a local config file. This file can be generated by running make gen-dev-config.

To apply database migrations, run make migrate. This is needed after the initial setup, and whenever you fetch new source from upstream.

Generally speaking, authentik is a Django application, ran by gunicorn, proxied by a Go application. The Go application serves static files.

Most functions and classes have type-hints and docstrings, so it is recommended to install a Python Type-checking Extension in your IDE to navigate around the code.

Before committing code, run make lint to ensure your code is formatted well. This also requires pyright, which is installed in the web/ folder to make dependency management easier.

Run make gen to generate an updated OpenAPI document for any changes you made.

Frontend Setup​

By default, no compiled bundle of the frontend is included so this step is required even if you're not developing for the UI.

To build the UI once, run make web-build.

Alternatively, if you want to live-edit the UI, you can run make web-watch instead. This will immediately update the UI with any changes you make so you can see the results in real time without needing to rebuild.

To format the frontend code, run make web.

Running​

Now that the backend and frontend have been setup and built, you can start authentik by running ak server. authentik should now be accessible at http://localhost:9000.