How does the bundling mechanism works?

napcoder · April 29, 2016, 2:41pm

Hi there,
I'm trying to change some little things in the core view (like not showing the toolbar or removing all the tabs on the right of the logo). I'm using the distribution downloaded from the download page of Kibana (both windows and linux).
I cannot understand how the bundling mechanism works. Should I change the source files (those into /src/ui)? If yes, how can I tell to kibana to start the bundle? If I make any changes and restart the server the bundle seems to not start and I cannot see any modification in the resulting bundle.
What will happen if I modify directly the bundled files (those into /optimize/bundles)? When these files will be overwritten by a new bundle operation, causing me to lose all my modification?

Thank you all.

lukas · April 29, 2016, 2:59pm

If you're modifying Kibana source code, I'd suggest getting started with the contributing guide:

github.com

elastic/kibana/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#development-environment-setup

# Contributing to Kibana

We understand that you may not have days at a time to work on Kibana. We ask that you read our contributing guidelines carefully so that you spend less time, overall, struggling to push your PR through our code review processes.

At the same time, reading the contributing guidelines will give you a better idea of how to post meaningful issues that will be more easily be parsed, considered, and resolved. A big win for everyone involved! :tada:

## Table of Contents

A high level overview of our contributing guidelines.

- [Effective issue reporting in Kibana](#effective-issue-reporting-in-kibana)
  - [Voicing the importance of an issue](#voicing-the-importance-of-an-issue)
  - ["My issue isn't getting enough attention"](#my-issue-isnt-getting-enough-attention)
  - ["I want to help!"](#i-want-to-help)
- [How We Use Git and GitHub](#how-we-use-git-and-github)
  - [Branching](#branching)
  - [Commits and Merging](#commits-and-merging)
  - [What Goes Into a Pull Request](#what-goes-into-a-pull-request)
- [Contributing Code](#contributing-code)
  - [Setting Up Your Development Environment](#setting-up-your-development-environment)

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If you start the Kibana server with npm start, then as you make changes to source files, they will automatically be rebundled. You shouldn't have to touch the bundled files themselves.

I hope this answers your question, and if it doesn't, please let me know!

napcoder · May 2, 2016, 10:55am

Hi Lukas,
not exactly. I'm working directly on the deb package installed on production server. If I modify the bundled files, is there any chance they will be overwritten?

lukas · May 4, 2016, 6:15pm

They'll be overwritten if you stop and start the Kibana server.

napcoder · May 10, 2016, 8:49am

Hi Lukas,
in my homologation environment it seems to remain the same, and never rebuild. I have restarted the service several times, but the modifications I made on the bundle files remain always the same. This is why I cannot understand how the build mechanism is actually working, I was thinking it should work like you said.

spalger · May 10, 2016, 3:27pm

@napcoder the build is actually cached based on the version numbers of all the plugins. In order to trigger a rebuild you have to delete the optimize/bundles/ directory in the kibana install. Then the build system will realize there is no build and recreate it.

napcoder · May 11, 2016, 12:42pm

Thank you a lot @spalger, this is exactly what I was looking for.
Do you guys know a way to let the build copy some images from /src/ui/public/images/ to optimize/bundles/src/ui/public/images/ ?

spalger · May 11, 2016, 11:19pm

If you put your images in a plugin they will be available, and you won't have to modify the source, or you can import the images from any of the source files and then the image will be marked to be included in the build.

napcoder · May 12, 2016, 1:12pm

Thank you very much @spalger, you solved all my problems