Common guide #

This section has articles related to all submodules (frontend, backend and exporter) such as: code style hints, architecture decisions, etc...

Configuration #

Both in the backend, the frontend and the exporter subsystems, there are an app.config namespace that defines the global configuration variables, their specs and the default values.

All variables have a conservative default, meaning that you can set up a Penpot instance without changing any configuration, and it will be reasonably safe and useful.

In backend and exporter, to change the runtime values you need to set them in the process environment, following the rule that an environment variable in the form PENPOT_<VARIABLE_NAME_IN_UPPERCASE> correspond to a configuration variable named variable-name-in-lowercase. Example:

(env)
PENPOT_ASSETS_STORAGE_BACKEND=assets-s3

(config)
assets-storage-backend :assets-s3

In frontend, the main resources/public/index.html file includes (if it exists) a file named js/config.js, where you can set configuration values as javascript global variables. The file is not created by default, so if you need it you must create it blank, and set the variables you want, in the form penpot<VariableNameInCamelCase>:

(js/config.js)
var penpotPublicURI = "https://penpot.example.com";

(config)
public-uri "https://penpot.example.com"

On premise instances #

If you use the official Penpot docker images, as explained in the Getting Started section, there is a config.env file that sets the configuration environment variables. It's the same file for backend, exporter and frontend.

For this last one, there is a script nginx-entrypoint.sh that reads the environment and generates the js/config.js when the container is started. This way all configuration is made in the single config.env file.

Dev environment #

If you use the developer docker images, the docker-compose.yaml directly sets the environment variables more appropriate for backend and exporter development.

Additionally, the backend start script and repl script set some more variables.

The frontend uses only the defaults.

If you want to change any variable for your local environment, you can change docker-compose.yaml and shut down and start again the container. Or you can modify the start script or directly set the environment variable in your session, and restart backend or exporter processes.

For frontend, you can manually create resources/public/js/config.js (it's ignored in git) and define your settings there. Then, just reload the page.

System logging #

In app.common.logging we have a general system logging utility, that may be used throughout all our code to generate execution traces, mainly for debugging.

You can add a trace anywhere, specifying the log level (trace, debug, info, warn, error) and any number of key-values:

(ns app.main.data.workspace.libraries-helpers
  (:require [app.common.logging :as log]))

(log/set-level! :warn)

...

(defn generate-detach-instance
  [changes container shape-id]
  (log/debug :msg "Detach instance"
             :shape-id shape-id
             :container (:id container))
  ...)

The current namespace is tracked within the log message, and you can configure at runtime, by namespace, the log level (by default :warn). Any trace below this level will be ignored.

Some keys have a special meaning:

  • :msg is the main trace message.
  • ::log/raw outputs the value without any processing or prettifying.
  • ::log/context append metadata to the trace (not printed, it's to be processed by other tools).
  • ::log/cause (only in backend) attach a java exception object that will be printed in a readable way with the stack trace.
  • ::log/async (only in backend) if set to false, makes the log processing synchronous. If true (the default), it's executed in a separate thread.
  • :js/<key> (only in frontend) if you prefix the key with the js/ namespace, the value will be printed as a javascript interactively inspectionable object.
  • :err (only in frontend) attach a javascript exception object, and it will be printed in a readable way with the stack trace.

backend #

The logging utility uses a different library for Clojure and Clojurescript. In the first case we use log4j2 to have much flexibility.

The configuration is made in log4j2.xml file. The Logger used for this is named "app" (there are other loggers for other subsystems). The default configuration just outputs all traces of level debug or higher to the console standard output.

There is a different log4j2-devenv for the development environment. This one outputs traces of level trace or higher to a file, and debug or higher to a zmq queue, that may be subscribed for other parts of the application for further processing.

The ouput for a trace in logs/main.log uses the format

[<date time>] : <level> <namespace> - <key1=val1> <key2=val2> ...

Example:

[2022-04-27 06:59:08.820] T app.rpc - action="register", name="update-file"

The zmq queue is not used in the default on premise or devenv setups, but there are a number of handlers you can use in custom instances to save errors in the database, or send them to a Sentry or similar service, for example.

frontend and exporter #

In the Clojurescript subservices, we use goog.log library. This is much simpler, and basically outputs the traces to the console standard output (the devtools in the browser or the console in the nodejs exporter).

In the browser, we have an utility debug function that enables you to change the logging level of any namespace (or of the whole app) in a live environment:

debug.set_logging("namespace", "level")

Assertions #

Penpot source code has this types of assertions:

assert #

Just using the clojure builtin assert macro.

Example:

(assert (number? 3) "optional message")

This asserts are only executed in development mode. In production environment all asserts like this will be ignored by runtime.

spec/assert #

Using the app.common.spec/assert macro.

This macro is based in cojure.spec.alpha/assert macro, and it's also ignored in a production environment.

The Penpot variant doesn't have any runtime checks to know if asserts are disabled. Instead, the assert calls are completely removed by the compiler/runtime, thus generating simpler and faster code in production builds.

Example:

(require '[clojure.spec.alpha :as s]
         '[app.common.spec :as us])

(s/def ::number number?)

(us/assert ::number 3)

spec/verify #

An assertion type that is always executed.

Example:

(require '[app.common.spec :as us])

(us/verify ::number 3)

This macro enables you to have assertions on production code, that generate runtime exceptions when failed (make sure you handle them appropriately).