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Local Development

DeviceChain is designed to run locally with only two dependencies: NATS and TimescaleDB. No Java, Kafka, ZooKeeper, Redis, Keycloak, or Mosquitto.

Status

DeviceChain is pre-release. This guide describes the intended local workflow; check the repository README for the current, authoritative setup steps.

Prerequisites​

  • Go 1.25+
  • Node 22 LTS (for the frontend and these docs)
  • Docker (to run TimescaleDB)
  • nats-server (a single ~10 MB binary)

1. Start the infrastructure​

# TimescaleDB (PostgreSQL + TimescaleDB extension)
docker run -d --name dc-timescaledb \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=devicechain \
  timescale/timescaledb-ha:pg17

# NATS with JetStream and the built-in MQTT server enabled
nats-server -js -m 8222

2. Build the workspace​

The backend is a Go workspace (go.work) spanning the core library, the operator, and the services.

go build ./backend/...

3. Run a service​

Each service is a single binary. Configuration is supplied via environment / config; see each service's config package for the available settings.

go run ./backend/services/event-sources

Repository layout​

backend/
  core/                 shared library (lifecycle, NATS, GORM, GraphQL, config, auth)
  k8s/                  operator + CRD types
  services/             event-sources, device-management, event-management, user-management, ...
  cli/                  dcctl
frontend/               React + Vite management UI
docs/                   this documentation site
deploy/                 Helm charts + OpenTofu modules

Next steps​