If you wish to make and test changes to the Outline source code to customize your installation or contribute to the open source project then you’ll need to run a development version of the software.

For the right balance of speed and performance we recommend running Redis + Postgres inside of Docker with the Node application running directly on the host machine. This guide assumes this setup.

Dependencies

Install these dependencies if you don't already have them:

1. Git

2. Docker for Desktop

3. Node.js (v20 LTS preferred)

4. Yarn

5. mkcert (For SSL)

Download

Clone the source code with the following command:

git clone git@github.com:outline/outline

Configuration

Env

Copy the .env.sample file to .env – for development the contents should mostly work as in the sample but it is required to configure at least one authentication provider of your choice or provision a user – see the bottom of this file.

Hosts

Add an entry in your /etc/hosts file to allow the local development domains to load:

 127.0.0.1     app.outline.dev
 127.0.0.1     wiki.outline.dev

Running

make up

This command will download the Node dependencies, create and migrate the database, install the local SSL certificates, and build and launch a development version of Outline.