Getting Started with Streamplace Development

So, you’ve decided to contribute to Streamplace development. Here’s how you can get started:

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• pnpm
  • A way to install it is with npm install -g pnpm if corepack is not enabled in your node install.
• Go (version 1.24)
  • If you use mise, you can install latest Go 1.24 with mise install go@prefix:1.24
• Meson
• Ninja
• pkg-config
• Rust
• Working C and C++ compilers: gcc on Linux or clang (via Xcode) on macOS.
• Reverse proxy

Reverse Proxy

Due to the nature of ATProto, a requirement for developing for Streamplace is using a reverse proxy so that your PDS can connect with your development environment.

Popular options include:

• Cloudflare Tunnel (recommended)
• zrok (self hostable, recommended)
• Pangolin (self-hostable)
• ngrok

Example usage:

• Cloudflare Tunnel: cloudflared tunnel --url http://127.0.0.1:38080
• zrok: zrok share http 127.0.0.1:38080
• Pangolin: (if you have a site set up) newt --id my-id --secret my-secret --endpoint 127.0.0.1:38080
• ngrok: ngrok http 38080

Tip: A static tunnel URL is preferred for consistency, especially if you need to share your dev environment or if you want to stay logged in between proxy restarts. Look at the docs for your preferred reverse proxy for more information.

Get Started

Streamplace Node

1. Install prereqs
2. make dev-setup

Now you’re ready to start developing! The app can be rebuilt with make dev, so as you make changes to the node, you can re-run your app something like this:

macOS:

make dev && ./build-darwin-arm64/streamplace

Linux:

make dev && ./build-linux-amd64/streamplace

The node will be accessible at http://127.0.0.1:38080.

By default, the make dev Streamplace node will proxy incoming requests front-end requests — basically every endpoint that’s not at /api or /xrpc — through to the Streamplace app dev server. Usually, you’ll want to be hacking on both of those things at once. If this isn’t the case — like you’re making exclusively backend changes — and you want to launch the node with the embedded frontend, you can override the pertinent command line argument:

make dev && ./build-darwin-arm64/streamplace --dev-frontend-proxy=""

If you’re using a proxy server, you may want to set your tunnel URL as the public host URL so you can get authentication working. You may do that via the --public-host argument.

Similarly, if you’re working on mobile and need authentication, use the --app-bundle-id argument with your bundle NSID in app.json (for Devplace, the id is tv.aquareum.dev).

Here’s an example with both:

make dev && ./build-darwin-arm64/streamplace \
  --public-host your.proxy.example.com \
  --app-bundle-id tv.aquareum.dev

Streamplace App

The Streamplace app will require a local Streamplace node to make any substantial changes, so you may want to start by following the Streamplace node section. However, if you’re only working on front-end changes and you’re having trouble building the node locally, you can download a production release of Streamplace and configure it to forward to the dev server with a command like:

curl -O https://git-cloudflare.stream.place/api/v4/projects/1/packages/generic/latest/VERSION/streamplace-VERSION-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
tar -xzvf streamplace-VERSION-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
./streamplace --dev-frontend-proxy=http://127.0.0.1:38081

Either way, once you have a local Streamplace node running, install the prerequisites with:

pnpm install

Then start building all of the packages with:

pnpm run start

iOS Build

pnpm run app ios

Android Build

pnpm run app android

You can also specify a physical device with something like pnpm run app ios -d 'Stream’s iPhone'. Note that these commands only run native builds; you’ll still need the development server booted up with pnpm run start.

Note also that react-native-webrtc, our primary package for streaming in and playing back on iOS/Android, doesn’t work very well in the iOS Simulator. It may work, it may crash. Physical devices preferred when possible!

Streamplace Docs

You’re looking at them. Boot up the dev server with:

pnpm run docs start

And you can then access them at http://127.0.0.1:38082/docs.