TTime/BUILD.md

# Build Instructions

The build is fairly simple, and I intend to keep it that way. The project is split into two main parts: the backend and the frontend.

Making all of these parts work properly under linux/macOS is fairly simple, but Windows is untested territory. You can always contact [Billy G™®©](https://support.microsoft.com) for help.

## Backend

For demo purposes, the backend uses sqlite3 as the database. The database is stored in the `backend` directory.

For future development, the database will be migrated to a more robust database such as PostgreSQL. This will require a few changes to the code, but the migration should be fairly simple. Practical difference for the programmer is the requirement of a running PostgreSQL server, for which a container can be used.

For initializing the database, simply navigate to the backend directory and run `make migrate`, which will create the database and the necessary tables.

To build and run the main server binary:

```bash
make build
make run
```

The server will be running on `localhost:8080`. This server does not hot reload, so you will need to restart the server after making changes.

If you ever wonder what the makefile does, you can always inspect it. It's quite simple and self-explanatory.

## Frontend

The frontend code might look very intimidating at first, but it's actually quite simple. The vast majority of the code is boilerplate and configuration.

The important parts resides in the `src` directory, which contains the actual React components and corresponding styles.

The frontend is built using Vite with React. Vite handles hot reloading and bundling.

First, you need to pull in the dependencies by running `npm install` in the frontend directory.
To spin up the development server, run `npm run dev`. This will start the development server on `localhost:3000`. Note that the backend server should be running for the frontend to work.

## Release Builds

The release build for the backend is a simple binary that can be run on any machine. The release build for the frontend is a static bundle that can be served by any web server.

We combine the frontend and backend into a single container using Podman/Docker. The `Containerfile` (also known as a Dockerfile) in the container directory is used to build the container. To see exactly how the container is built, refer to the `Containerfile`.