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For Developers

Before you start, be sure to read the Contribution guidelines!

About Sofie Core

Documentation

The documentation can be found at Sofie TV Automation Documentation and its for subsection For Developers. Specific Sofie Core information can also be in DOCS.md and DEVELOPER.md in the subfolders of this git project, for example meteor/server/api/playout.

Monorepo Layout

This repository is a monorepo and contains both the main application (usually called server-core) as well as multiple auxiliary projects. In the meteor folder you will find the main Meteor application with server and client sub folders for the server-side application and front end. The packages folder contains other libraries and apps used together with Sofie Core.

Getting Started with Local Development

Follow these instructions to start up Sofie Core in development mode. (For production deploys, see System documentation.)

Prerequisites

  • Install Node.js 14 (using nvm or nvm-windows is the recommended way to install Node.js)

  • Install Meteor (npm install --global meteor@2)

  • Install Node.js 18 (using the same method you used above, you can uninstall node 14 if needed)

  • Install an older version of corepack (npm install --global corepack@0.15.3)

  • Enable corepack (corepack enable) as administrator/root. If corepack is not found, you may need to install it first with npm install --global corepack

  • If on Windows, you may need to npm install --global windows-build-tools but this is not always necessary

Quick Start

git clone -b master https://github.com/nrkno/sofie-core.git
cd sofie-core
yarn start

💡 First startup may take a while, especially on Windows. To speed things up, consider adding %LOCALAPPDATA%\.meteor and the directory where you cloned server-core to your Windows Defender virus protection exclusions.

Slightly more Involved Start

  1. Clone the repository (for development, it is recommended to base your work on the latest unstable release branch)

    git clone -b releaseXYZ https://github.com/nrkno/sofie-core.git

  2. Go into the cloned directory

    cd sofie-core

  3. Setup meteor and dependencies. (Before this, make sure your NODE_ENV environment variable is NOT set to "production"!)

    yarn install

  4. Start development mode

    yarn dev

  5. In another window, start the playout-gateway. You will need to manually restart this upon making changes

    cd sofie-core/packages/playout-gateway
yarn buildstart

Lowering memory, CPU footprint in development

If you find yourself in a situation where running Sofie in development mode is too heavy, but you're not planning on modifying any of the low-level packages in the packages directory, you may want to run Sofie in the UI-only mode, in which only meteor will be rebuilt and type-checked on modification:

yarn dev --ui-only

Dealing with Strange Errors

If you get any strange errors (such as the application crashing, "Unable to resolve some modules" or errors during installation of dependencies), the last resort is to reset and restart:

yarn reset # Removes all installed dependencies and build artifacts
yarn start # Set up, install and run in dev mode

Editing the Code

The code is formatted and linted using prettier/eslint. The shared config can be found in the code-standard-preset project. We recommend using VS code with the Prettier plugin and "format-on-save" enabled.

When Using the Visual Studio Code IDE

We provide a settings.json.default file in .vscode that you should consider using with your IDE. Also consider installing suggested extensions, which should help you create PRs consistent with project's code standards.

Attaching a NodeJS debugger to the Meteor process

You can connect a debugging client to Meteor's Node process on port 9229. In order for that to be possible, enable the --inspect-meteor mode:

yarn dev --inspect-meteor

Debugging blueprints

The "Attach" configuration in launch.json supports debugging blueprints.

Local blueprints repo needs to be added to the Visual Studio Code workspace under the name "Blueprints".

It is required to set devtool to 'inline-source-map' and output.devtoolModuleFilenameTemplate to 'blueprint:///[resource-path]' in webpack config of the blueprints.

Translating Sofie

For support of various languages in the GUI, Sofie uses the i18next framework. It uses JSON-based translation files to store UI strings. In order to build a new translation file, first extract a PO template file from Sofie UI source code:

cd meteor
yarn i18n-extract-pot

Find the created template.pot file in meteor/i18n folder. Create a new PO file based on that template using a PO editor of your choice. Save it in the meteor/i18n folder using your ISO 639-1 language code of choice as the filename.

Then, run the compilation script:

yarn i18n-compile-json

The resulting JSON file will be placed in meteor/public/locales/xx, where it will be available to the Sofie UI for use and auto-detection.

Then submit this as a PR.

Deprecations

ConfigManifests

The ConfigManifests for Blueprints and Gateways was replaced with JSONSchema in R50.
However, one usage by AdlibActions for their userDataManifest remains as this is not something we are actively using.

Blueprint Migrations

In R49, a replacement flow was added consisting of validateConfig and applyConfig.
It is no longer recommended to use the old migrations flow for showstyle and studio blueprints.

ExpectedMediaItems

These are used for Media-manager which is no longer being developed.

Blueprints: getPieceABSessionId & getTimelineObjectAbSessionId

With AB being a native concept supported by Sofie since R50, these are likely no longer useful to Blueprints.

MongoQuery fields specifier

It is recommended to use projection instead, as it is functionally identical but follows recommended naming from mongodb.

Other info

Version-Numbering Scheme

This repository, Sofie Core, does not follow semver. We believe that semver does not make sense for Sofie Core as there are so many moving parts that a majority of releases could be considered breaking in some way.

Instead of semver, the Major number gets incremented whenever we feel like Sofie has evolved enough to warrant the change. The minor number gets incremented for each iteration of the development cycle, with the digit matching the cycle number. The patch number gets incremented for patch releases as expected.

The version numbers of the blueprints-integration and server-core-integration libraries are tied to this, and as such they also do not follow semver. In future these may be decoupled. The api of server-core-integration is pretty stable and rarely undergoes any breaking changes, so is ok to be mismatched. The api of blueprints-integration is rather volatile, and often has breaking changes. Because of this, we recommend matching the minor version of blueprints-integration with Sofie core. Sofie will warn if these do not match. We expect this to settle down in the future, and will review this decision when we feel it is worthwhile.

Glossary

Note: this list is not very complete but will be supplemented over time.

Term Meaning
Auto Next Part with a set duration after which Sofie will automatically take the next part
Hold Allows a blueprint developer to extend some pieces into the next part until the user does another take. Can be used to make _J-cuts_.
Piece or Part Instance A copy of the original part or piece that was created just before playback. Can contain timing information and prevents ingest operations from badly affecting parts and pieces on-air

Additional license information

Background image used for previewing graphical elements is based on "Sunset over dark forest" by Aliis Sinisalu: https://unsplash.com/photos/8NiAH5YRZPs used under the Unsplash License.