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Cloning and Building

If you've done this sort of thing before, you'll find it easy to clone and build TerriaMap with these quick instructions:

git clone https://github.com/TerriaJS/TerriaMap.git

cd TerriaMap

export NODE_OPTIONS=--max_old_space_size=4096

npm install -g yarn

yarn install && yarn gulp && yarn start

# Open at http://localhost:3001

If you run into trouble or want more explanation, read on.

Prerequisites

TerriaJS can be built and run on almost any macOS, Linux, or Windows system. The following are required to build TerriaJS:

  • The Bash command shell. On macOS or Linux you almost certainly already have this. On Windows, you can easily get it by installing Git for Windows. In the instructions below, we assume you're using a Bash command prompt.
  • Node.js v16.0. You can check your node version by running node --version on the command-line.
  • npm v8.0. npm is usually installed automatically alongside the above. You can check your npm version by running npm --version.
  • yarn v1.19.0 or later. This can be installed using npm install -g yarn@^1.19.0

Cloning TerriaMap

The latest version of TerriaMap is on GitHub, and the preferred way to get it is by using git:

git clone https://github.com/TerriaJS/TerriaMap.git

cd TerriaMap

If you're unable to use git, you can also download a ZIP file and extract it somewhere on your system. We recommend using git, though, because it makes it much easier to update to later versions in the future.

Increase NodeJS memory limit

To avoid running out of memory when installing dependencies and building TerriaMap, increase the memory limit of node:

export NODE_OPTIONS=--max_old_space_size=4096

Installing Dependencies

All of the dependencies required to build and run TerriaMap, other than the prerequisites listed above, are installed using yarn:

yarn install

The dependencies are installed in the node_modules subdirectory. No global changes are made to your system.

Building TerriaMap

Do a standard build of TerriaMap with:

yarn gulp

Or, you can create a minified release build with:

yarn gulp release

To watch for changes and automatically do an incremental build when any are detected, use:

yarn gulp watch

yarn gulp simply runs gulp, so you can use that directly if you prefer (run npm install -g gulp-cli to install it globally).

The full set of gulp tasks can be found on the Development Environment page.

Running TerriaMap

TerriaMap includes a simple Node.js-based web server, called terriajs-server. To start it, run:

yarn start

Then, open a web browser on http://localhost:3001 to use TerriaMap.

Keeping up with Updates

If you're building an application by using TerriaMap as a starting point, you will want to keep in sync as TerriaMap is improved and updated to use new versions of TerriaJS. Forking the TerriaMap repo and using git to keep it in sync is outside the scope of this document, but GitHub has a nice explanation.

After pulling new changes, you will need to run yarn install again to pick up any changed dependencies and then build TerriaMap. If you have problems building or running, it is sometimes helpful to remove and reinstall the dependencies from npm:

rm -rf node_modules
yarn install

Having trouble?

Checkout the Problems and Solutions page to see if we have them covered. You are also welcome to post your problem on the TerriaJS Discussions forum and we'll be happy to help!

Next Steps

Now that you have a working local build of TerriaMap, you may want to customize it or deploy it for others to use.