AKHQ

Development Environment

Early dev image

You can have access to last feature / bug fix with docker dev image automatically build on tag dev

docker pull tchiotludo/akhq:dev

The dev jar is not publish on GitHub, you have 2 solutions to have the dev jar :

Get it from docker image

docker pull tchiotludo/akhq:dev
docker run --rm --name=akhq -v /tmp/akhq/application-dev.yml:/app/application.yml -it tchiotludo/akhq:dev
docker cp akhq:/app/akhq.jar .

Or build it with a ./gradlew shadowJar, the jar will be located here build/libs/akhq-*.jar

Development Server

A docker-compose is provided to start a development environment. Just install docker & docker-compose, clone the repository and issue a simple docker-compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml up to start a dev server. Dev server is a java server & webpack-dev-server with live reload.

The configuration for the dev server is in application.dev.yml.

Once it started, you can visit http://localhost:4000, additionally it is possible to run npm start inside the client-folder which contains hot reload.

Setup local dev environment on Windows

In case you want to develop for AKHQ on Windows with IntelliJ IDEA without Docker (for any reason) you can follow this brief guide. For the following steps, please, make sure you meet these requirements:

  • OS: Windows (10)
  • Kafka (2.6.0) is downloaded and extracted, the installation directory is referred to as $KAFKA_HOME in the latter
  • Git is installed and configured
  • IntelliJ IDEA (Community Edition 2020.2) with the following plugins installed:

First run a Kafka server locally. Therefore, you need to start Zookeeper first by opening a CMD and doing:

$KAFKA_HOME\bin\windows\zookeeper-server-start.bat config\zookeper.properties
$KAFKA_HOME\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat config\server.properties

A zero-config Kafka server should be up and running locally on your machine now. For further details or troubleshooting see Kafka Getting started guideopen in new window. In the next step we're going to checkout AKHQ from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/tchiotludo/akhq.git

Open the checked out directory in IntelliJ IDEA. The current version (0.25.0) of AKHQ is built with Java 17. If you don't have OpenJDK 17 installed already, do the following in IntelliJ IDEA:

  • File > Project Structure... > Platform Settings > SDKs > + > Download JDK... > select a vendor of your choice (but make sure it's version 11)
  • download + install. Make sure that JDK 11 is set under Project Settings > Project SDK
  • language level is Java 11.
  • Now tell Gradle to use Java 11 as well: File > Settings > Plugins > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Gradle > Gradle JVM: any JDK 11.

To configure AKHQ for using the Kafka server you set up before, edit application.yml by adding the following under akhq:

akhq:
  connections:
    kafka:
      properties:
        bootstrap.servers: "localhost:9092"

WARNING

Do not commit this part of application.yml. A more secure way to configure your local development Kafka server is described in the Micronaut doc, chapter "Application Configuration"open in new window.

Now you should be able to build the project with Gradle. Therefore, go to the Gradle view in IDEA, select Tasks > build > build. If an error occurs saying that any filename is too long: move your project directory to a root directory in your filesystem or as a fix (only for testing purposes) set the argument -x test to skip tests temporarily.

To debug a running AKHQ instance, go to the Gradle tab in IntelliJ IDEA, Tasks > application > right click run and click "Debug(...)". AKHQ should start up and hit the breakpoints you set in your IDE. Happy developing/debugging!