docs • getting started • source

Running Node-RED from source

Building and running the code from source is only intended for users who are happy to be using development code, or for developers wanting to contribute to the project.

Prerequisites

To run Node-RED from source you will need:

a supported version of Node.js.
a git client
the grunt-cli npm module installed globally:
```
sudo npm install -g grunt-cli
```

Cloning the code and installing dependencies

You can clone the source repository directly from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/node-red/node-red.git

This will create a directory called node-red in the current directory that contains the full source code of the project. The rest of these instructions assume you are inside that directory.

You should then pick which branch you want to build.

master - the default branch. This is the maintenance branch which contains the code of the current stable release, plus any bug fixes that have been applied ahead of the next maintenance release.
dev - the development branch. This is where all new development happens.

If you want to use the dev branch, you should run the command:

git checkout dev

Once you are on you your chosen branch, you should install all of the dependencies with the command:

npm install

Building Node-RED

Before you can start Node-RED you must build it. This can be done using the command:

grunt build

Running Node-RED

You can then run Node-RED using the command:

npm start

If you want to pass any command-line arguments, you must use the following syntax:

npm start -- <args>

The -- argument tells npm to pass any following arguments to the command it runs.

Automatically restarting

If you are editing the source code you must restart Node-RED to load the changes.

A special grunt task is provided to do this automatically.

grunt dev

This command will build and run Node-RED and then watch the filesystem for any changes to the source code. If it detects changes made to the editor code, it will rebuild the editor component and you can reload the editor to see the changes. If it detects changes made to the runtime or nodes it will restart Node-RED to load those changes.

This mode does not allow you to pass arguments to the Node-RED command other than to specify a different flow file:

grunt dev --flowFile=my-flow-file.json