Want to help contribute to RePlays? Great! This page will help you get started on how to setup your dev environment and debug the RePlays app.

Feel free to reach out on Discord if you have issues or questions about the setup or general development.

Prerequisites:

• Visual Studio 17 2022
  • .NET SDK 8.0.100
• Node 18+
• Knowledge in C# and Typescript (React.js)

Optional:

• Visual Studio Code
• OBS Studio 30.0.0
• Cmake, git, & 7zip (if you are planning to build libobs yourself)
  • Make sure 7z is in your system environment PATH

Visual Studio will be the main IDE for this guide, however feel free to follow along using Visual Studio Code, Jetbrains Rider, etc.

Using git cli or using your preferred method of cloning. Make sure to include submodules.

• git clone --recursive https://github.com/lulzsun/RePlays.git

Open RePlays.sln using Visual Studio

• In the project's ClientApp folder, run npm ci (from cmd/powershell)
  • This will download the necessary node modules for the React.js portion of the app

This step can be skipped and is optional because when you start debugging, it will automatically run this command for you if you haven't already

libobs is necessary for debugging and is not included with the project, the required files must be placed here:

~/bin/Debug/net8.0-windows/win-x64/

At the time of writing this guide, you have a few options for where to get libobs:

1. Download the build that RePlays releases use (RECOMMENDED)
2. Build it yourself

The GitHub workflows do not build libobs on every commit. It is built once per version of build-libobs.cmd and published as a zip on the libobs release, and the nightly and stable builds download it from there. Using the same zip gives you exactly what production runs.

1. Download the newest libobs-<obs version>-<script>-windows-x64.zip from the libobs release
2. Extract it into ~/obs-studio-build/obs-studio-<obs version>/build/rundir/Release/bin/64bit/ (create the folders; <obs version> must match the OBSVersion in RePlays.csproj), so that obs.dll ends up directly in that folder

The msbuild pre-build copies the files from there into the Debug folder the first time you debug.

This gives the same result as the download, since the workflows run the same script, and is what you need when changing the script or the obs version.

This requires you to have Cmake, git, 7zip, and Visual Studio 17 2022 installed on your system.

Make sure Cmake, git and 7zip are in your system environmental variables (so they can be accessed through cmd)

Provided that you have all this, the build script is a one-click solution.

1. Run build-libobs.cmd in cmd/powershell from root folder
2. Build should be successful if the file ~/obs-studio-build/obs-studio-<obs version>/build/rundir/Release/bin/64bit/obs.dll exists

The script takes care of everything (cloning, building, downloading and copying certain third party obs plugins if necessary) for you. When a change to the script lands on main, the Build LibObs workflow builds it and publishes the new zip on the libobs release, so the app builds keep downloading instead of building.

You are now ready to start debugging! Upon initial debugging, the msbuild pre-build will take care of any missing files and provide warnings/errors if those files cannot be found (libobs files, React app files).

To manually build a release on your machine, run the following command at the root of the project

dotnet publish /p:Configuration=Release /p:Version=X.X.X /p:PublishProfile=FolderProfile

You must specify a version in the numeral format of X.X.X (e.g. 1.69.420). Version numbering does not really matter for local release builds.

The build will make use of Velopack and create deltas or full packages, including a Setup file. You can find these files in /bin/Deployment/Releases/. A delta package is only created when the previous version's full package is present in that folder (the GitHub workflows download it with dotnet vpk download github).

To try the update flow of a local build before publishing it, start an installed RePlays with the environment variable REPLAYS_UPDATE_FEED set to the /bin/Deployment/Releases/ folder. It is then used as the update feed instead of the GitHub releases.

You can learn more about the Velopack deployment process here.

Visual Studio Code may be preferred when working with the React.js portion of the app. The React.js is the interface or front-end of the application.

Open ~/ClientApp in Visual Studio Code and begin working on the interface like any normal React.js workflow!

You can also use VSCode to debug and make changes to C# related files, however the VSCode debug tools may not be as powerful and convenient compared to Visual Studio.