Developer Guide

This guide is for developers who want to contribute to VideoCMS or run it from source without Docker.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the following installed:

• Go (v1.25 or higher)
• Bun (v1.2 or higher)
• FFmpeg (v4+, must be in your system PATH)
• GCC (Required for CGO/SQLite)
• Git

Full-Stack Development

The recommended workflow starts the Nuxt frontend and hot-reloading Go backend together.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/kirari04/videocms.git
   cd videocms

   For an existing clone, initialize the submodules with:

   git submodule update --init --recursive

2. Download Go dependencies:

   go mod download

3. Start VideoCMS:

   make dev

   This command:

   • installs the locked frontend dependencies with Bun;
   • starts Nuxt at http://127.0.0.1:3000;
   • starts Go with Air at http://127.0.0.1:3001;
   • proxies /api, player, captcha, icons, and media requests through Nuxt;
   • stops both processes cleanly when either one exits or you press Ctrl+C.

   The browser therefore uses one origin, matching the production request shape without requiring development CORS configuration.

To use different ports:

make dev DEV_FRONTEND_PORT=4000 DEV_BACKEND_PORT=4001

For focused debugging, the processes can also be started separately:

make dev-backend
make dev-frontend

Environment Variables

The backend reads its existing environment variables as usual. The development launcher also supports:

• DEV_FRONTEND_HOST
• DEV_FRONTEND_PORT
• DEV_BACKEND_HOST
• DEV_BACKEND_PORT
• DEV_BACKEND_URL
• DEV_PUBLIC_ORIGIN
• DEV_MEDIA_PATH

Frontend Setup (Nuxt 4)

The frontend can still be run directly when needed:

cd videocms-frontend
bun install --frozen-lockfile
bun run dev

Its development proxy targets http://127.0.0.1:3001 by default. Set NUXT_DEV_BACKEND_URL to point it at another backend.

Testing

Before submitting a PR:

go test ./...
go vet ./...
cd videocms-frontend && bun run build

Also manually test the workflow you changed and ensure modified Go files have been formatted.

Building for Production

To build the static binary and frontend assets:

Backend

# Build the binary
go build -o videocms main.go

Frontend

cd videocms-frontend
bun run build
# Output will be in .output/

Docker

The standard way to build the full image:

docker build -t videocms:local .