This is the main repo for Cardstack, an open source application architecture for building cohesive experiences on open, decentralized infrastructure.

Join the discussion around developing on the Cardstack framework on Discord, and read our documentation on docs.cardstack.com.

This is a monorepo. Each directory under packages and cards is distributed as a standalone NPM package under the @cardstack NPM namespace. More information is available in the README.md within each package.

We use volta to manage our global javascript dependencies. In this case, specifically, we use it to manage node and yarn. To use it simply install it following the instructions here: https://docs.volta.sh/guide/getting-started

In development, we use lerna to manage the inter-dependencies of all the packages. To get started:

1. Install node >= 12.
2. Install yarn >= 0.28 (earlier versions work but will not benefit from Workspaces).
3. yarn global add lerna (use >= 2.0.0 for yarn workspaces integration)
4. lerna bootstrap
5. Launch the typescript compiler with yarn compile --watch

There is work-in-progress to make Cardstack Hub automatically manage docker-based microservices, but for the present you need to start these things up manually to run the full test suite:

docker run -d -p 5432:5432 --rm cardstack/pg-test
docker run -d -p 8838:80 --rm cardstack/git-http-server

Cardstack follows semantic versioning. As a young, pre-1.0 project, this means you can continue to expect breaking changes in minor releases. Each package should endeavor to include a CHANGELOG.md once it begins to have a non-trivial number of external users.

We intend to adopt a community RFC governance process for public API changes, based on the Rust and Ember projects. At this pre-1.0 stage, RFCs are optional and changes may still be fast and furious.

Cardstack follows the Ember Community Guidelines, both because we are a proper subset of the existing Ember community and because we wholeheartedly endorse the same values.