Contribute to Apps-Engine

Being open source, we always welcome contributors to help us develop the ultimate chat platform. Contribute to our open source Apps-Engine framework, increasing the world of possibilities of integrations around the Rocket.Chat ecosystem. You can check out our Apps-Engine repository here.

GitHub - RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Apps-engine: The Rocket.Chat Apps engine and definitions.

An excellent place to start looking at is our open issues and determining if you can help us with them.

When developing new functionalities, you need to integrate the local version of the Apps-Engine with your local version of Rocket.Chat.

Get the Apps-Engine code

To start, clone the Apps-Engine repository and navigate into the directory by running the following commands:
```
git clone https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Apps-engine.git
cd Rocket.Chat.Apps-engine
```
Next, install all the required packages and compile the changes since that is what Rocket.Chat itself will execute.
```
npm install
npm run compile
```
Setup your Rocket.Chat environment following the guide on server environment setup.
After setting up, go to the directory and run the following command:
```
meteor npm install PATH_TO_APPS_ENGINE
```
Here PATH_TO_APPS_ENGINE is the path to the Apps-Engine repo you cloned earlier.
You can now start your Rocket.Chat with the meteor command, it will use your local Apps-Engine instead of the one on NPM.
Whenever you make changes to the engine, run npm run compile again - meteor will take care of restarting the server due to the changes.

Troubleshooting Apps-Engine development

Sometimes, when you update the Apps-Engine code and compile it while Rocket.Chat is running; you run into errors similar to these:

Unable to resolve some modules:

  "@rocket.chat/apps-engine/definition/AppStatus" in
/Users/dev/rocket.chat/Rocket.Chat/app/apps/client/admin/helpers.js (web.browser)

If you notice problems related to these missing modules, consider running:

  meteor npm install --save @rocket.chat/apps-engine

Restart the meteor process, and it should be fixed.

Sometimes using meteor npm install PATH_TO_APPS_ENGINE causes the following error:

npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall rename
npm ERR! path PATH_TO_ROCKETCHAT/node_modules/.staging/@rocket.chat/apps-engine-c7135600/node_modules/@babel/code-frame
npm ERR! dest PATH_TO_ROCKETCHAT/node_modules/.staging/@babel/code-frame-f3697825
npm ERR! errno -2
npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, rename 'PATH_TO_ROCKETCHAT/node_modules/.staging/@rocket.chat/apps-engine-c7135600/node_modules/@babel/code-frame' -> 'PATH_TO_ROCKETCHAT/node_modules/.staging/@babel/code-frame-f3697825'
npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.
npm ERR! enoent

Here PATH_TO_ROCKETCHAT is the path to the main Rocket.Chat server repo in your system. To fix this, we reinstall the package once again and delete the previous package.

~/Rocket.Chat$ rm -rf node_modules/@rocket.chat/apps-engine
~/Rocket.Chat$ cd PATH_TO_APP_ENGINE
~/Rocket.Chat.Apps-engine$ npm install
~/Rocket.Chat.Apps-engine$ cd PATH_TO_ROCKETCHAT
~/Rocket.Chat$ meteor npm install ../Rocket.Chat.Apps-engine