Mac OSX

You can set up and configure a  Rocket.Chat development environment on your macOS system running on Apple Silicon or systems with non-Apple Silicon chips.
Apple Silicon
Preparation Steps
Install Yarn​
Install Meteor​
Install Homebrew​
Install the Node Version Manager (nvm) with this command:
brew install nvm
Confirm that your nvm version is 0.39.2 or higher by running the command nvm --version in your terminal.
Setting up a Rocket.Chat Development Environment on MacOS Apple Silicon
Fork the Rocket.Chat repository on GitHub. Clone the forked repository to your local dev box using this command:
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/Rocket.Chat.git
Navigate into the project directory and configure an additional remote so we can later fetch updates from the main Rocket.Chat repo with these commands:
git clone https://github.com/your-username/Rocket.Chat
git remote add upstream https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.git
Confirm the Node.js version required by your RocketChat version by executing the following command:
cat package.json | grep -A4 engines | grep node
Install the required version of NodeJS replacing x.x.x with the required NodeJs version number:
nvm install x.x.x
Initialize the meteor framework. This will show the version of meteor requested by Rocket.Chat (located in apps/meteor/.meteor/release). It will also initialize the framework.
cd apps/meteor
meteor --version
cd ../..
Install all needed packages and proceed to build the Rocket.Chat app with these commands:
yarn
yarn build
Start your development server. 
For systems with 16 GB of memory or higher, use this command:
yarn dev
For systems with less than 16 GB of memory, use
yarn dsv
Once it is finished, the following output will be displayed on your terminal and the local server will be running on http://localhost:3000.
If you encounter any issues, see Troubleshooting.
Setting up a Rocket.Chat Development Environment Non-Apple Silicon Chips
This setup instruction has been tested on MacBook Pro 2015, 8Gig Ram, 512Gb SSD,i5.
Install Meteor by executing this command:
curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh
Meteor comes pre-installed with npm and node, confirm the versions by executing this command:
meteor node -v
meteor npm -v
Install Yarn if it's not already on your system. It is the recommended package manager.
npm install --global yarn
Information on the various versions of packages needed can be found in the package.json
To easily manage the node versions on your machine, install the n node package manager and switch to your desired NodeJs version.
npm install -g n
n x.x.x
node -v
Replace x.x.x with the NodeJs version number. 
Fork the Rocket.Chat repository on GitHub. Clone the forked repository and navigate to the project directory using this command:
git clone https://github.com/your-username/Rocket.Chat
cd Rocket.Chat
Run the following commands to navigate to the meteor directory and download the necessary meteor version for Rocket.Chat, as configured in .meteor/release file:
cd apps/meteor
meteor --version
Navigate to the project root directory and  install all the needed packages by executing this command:
cd ../..
yarn
Build and startup your development server by running this command:
yarn build
yarn dev
Once it is finished, the following output will be displayed on your terminal and the local server will be running on http://localhost:3000.
Rocket.Chat server successfully running on macOS
You can modify the code in your IDE and see the changes on the server instance. Now, you can start contributing to Rocket.Chat!
Troubleshooting
Failure linking "fibers" (Apple Silicon)
If yarn is failing on the link step for fibers with a log similar to:
➤ YN0007: │ fibers@npm:5.0.3 must be built because it never has been before or the last one failed
➤ YN0009: │ fibers@npm:5.0.3 couldn't be built successfully (exit code 1, logs can be found here: /private/var/folders/…/build.log)
➤ YN0009: │ fibers@npm:5.0.3 couldn't be built successfully (exit code 1, logs can be found here: /private/var/folders/…/build.log)
➤ YN0009: │ fibers@npm:5.0.3 couldn't be built successfully (exit code 1, logs can be found here: /private/var/folders/…/build.log)
Install node-gyp globally
npm install node-gyp --global
Rebuild fibers for the system architecture manually
cd node_modules/fibers
node-gyp rebuild --arch=arm64
Copy binary to the correct location
mkdir bin/darwin-arm64-83
cp build/Release/fibers.node bin/darwin-arm64-83/fibers.node
Copy the rebuilt module into meteor
cd ../..
rm -rf apps/meteor/node_modules/fibers/
cp -r node_modules/fibers apps/meteor/node_modules/
Follow the instructions below for fixing a Bcrypt problem, even though its error message has not yet appeared.
Bcrypt requires arm64 binary but has amd64 one instead (Apple Silicon)
​
The error specifically looks like the following:
(mach-o file, but is an incompatible architecture (have 'x86_64', need 'arm64e')), '/usr/local/lib/bcrypt_lib.node' (no such file), '/usr/lib/bcrypt_lib.node' (no such file)
Move to the bcrypt directory and rebuild everything
cd node_modules/bcrypt
make
Copy the rebuilt module into meteor
cd ../..
rm -rf apps/meteor/node_modules/bcrypt
cp -r node_modules/bcrypt apps/meteor/node_modules/
Linux
Windows 10
Last modified 1mo ago