Config manager

Getting started

Create a python virtualenv then run:

make init

Create a local development postgres db

createdb config_manager

Create or update db schema

make upgrade-db

Load data

make load-data

Drop local data

make drop-data

To run the application run:

make run

To test out github app integration locally you need to set the following in a .env file:

GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=[the id]
GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=[the secret]
GITHUB_APP_ID=[github app id]
GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY=[base64 encoded private key for github app]
CONFIG_BRANCH=[the config repo brach this app pushes to]

Speak to @ashimali about where to find the above

Adding new python packages to the project

This project uses pip-tools to manage requirements files. https://pypi.org/project/pip-tools/

When using fresh checkout of this repository, then make init will take care of the initial of packages from the checked in requirements and dev-requirements files.

These instructions are only for when you add new libraries to the project.

To add a production dependency to the main aapplication, add the package to the requirements.in file.

Then run the piptools compile command on the "in" file:

python -m piptools compile requirements/requirements.in

That will generate a new requirements.txt file in the requirements directory.

To add a development library, add a line to dev-requirements.in.

Note that the first line of that file is:

"-r requirements.txt" which constrains the versions of dependencies in the requirements.txt file generated in previous step.

python -m piptools compile requirements/dev-requirements.in

Then to install all the packages run:

python -m piptools sync requirements/requirements.txt requirements/dev-requirements.txt

Frontend build

This project uses the @planning-data/digital-land-frontend npm package to manage frontend asset compilation and copying.

How it works

The build process uses nps (npm-package-scripts) to organize build tasks. The base scripts come from digital-land-frontend, with project-specific overrides in package-scripts.js.

Build tools

• SASS: Compiles SCSS to CSS
• Rollup: Bundles custom JavaScript files
• copyfiles: Copies vendor assets (govuk-frontend, accessible-autocomplete)

Build commands

Build all assets (runs automatically after npm install):

npm run build

Watch for changes during development:

npm run watch

Copy vendor assets:

npm run copy

Generated files

All static assets are generated during build and output to application/static/:

• application/static/stylesheets/ - Compiled CSS
• application/static/javascripts/ - Bundled JS
• application/static/images/ - Image assets
• application/static/govuk/ - GOV.UK Frontend assets

These directories are git-ignored and should never be committed.

Project-specific customizations

The package-scripts.js file extends digital-land-frontend with:

• Override for govuk-frontend v5 asset paths (fixes compatibility issue)
• Custom vendor asset copying (accessible-autocomplete, MOJ components)
• GOV.UK Frontend JavaScript bundle

See the comments in package-scripts.js for details on why these overrides are necessary.

Digital Land Frontend Configuration

Frontend build paths are configured in digital-land-frontend.config.json.