Modifying Themes DSpace 7.4

[Sarah Butash]

Hello,

We will soon be modifying the theme in our DSpace 7.4 environment.  In DSpace 5.11, I could make a theme/UI change, bounce the tomcat server and the change would be in our live environment.  I'm looking for the way to make changes in this way for 7.4. We work on a Linux server without an IDE.  For DSpace 7.4, I notice that in the Getting Started Demo, the presenter keeps recompiling to commit UI changes (header, footer, etc). He mentions running a yarn:start command.  What is that compiling? The whole DSpace instance? the UI? 

This may seem like a very novice question.  I'm just trying to get my head around this new UI.

Thanks so much!

Sarah

--

Sarah Butash

she / her

Library Systems Analyst, OU Libraries

Kresge Library, Room 227

100 Library Drive, Rochester, MI  48309-4479

Phone: 248-370-2368

[Mark H. Wood]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 09:56:54AM -0500, Sarah Butash wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We will soon be modifying the theme in our DSpace 7.4 environment. In
> DSpace 5.11, I could make a theme/UI change, bounce the tomcat server and
> the change would be in our live environment. I'm looking for the way to
> make changes in this way for 7.4. We work on a Linux server without an
> IDE. For DSpace 7.4, I notice that in the Getting Started Demo, the
> presenter keeps recompiling to commit UI changes (header, footer, etc). He
> mentions running a yarn:start command. What is that compiling? The whole
> DSpace instance? the UI?

To change a theme (or any part of the UI), you need to rebuild the
front end (dspace-angular), because part of that process compresses
and packs up the code into bundles that can be sent to the browser to
run there. Then you need to restart the NodeJS instance that serves
it out. The back end isn't affected by changes to the UI and can be
left running.

I *have* seen that at least some UI changes will be taken up without
restarting, if I just copy the rebuilt front end 'dist' tree to the
place from which it's run, but I don't know when I can trust this so I
usually restart it anyway.

--
Mark H. Wood
Lead Technology Analyst

University Library
Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis
755 W. Michigan Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
317-274-0749
www.ulib.iupui.edu

[Sarah Butash]

Thanks for this info! So, I'll want to use an IDE vs working in Linux it seems?

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[Mark H. Wood]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2023 at 07:51:49AM -0500, Sarah Butash wrote:
> Thanks for this info! So, I'll want to use an IDE vs working in Linux it
> seems?

I don't think it's necessary but it is useful and doesn't hurt.

I should mention that I think I don't work with DSpace 7 in quite the
same way that most do right now. From the first, I've been building
and copying the front end as if for production use. So I don't know a
lot about the *typical* development environment. I use NetBeans for
developing both back end and front end, but I never run either from
there; I have a few scripts that copy things to the right places, and
I'll usually have at least one terminal window running as root to do
restarts and monitor logs. Rather than using 'pm2' as most? do, I've
written initscripts to directly run the the backend and frontend
services just as most OS-provided daemons are run.

So, someone else may be your best bet for detailed advice on how most
sites develop and run DSpace 7.