Development overview

Volum is organized as a monorepo with Desktop, mobile, volumd, server-administrator, and website applications under apps/. Reusable frontend source lives under packages/; transport-neutral Rust services live in crates/volum-server/. The root Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock own the Rust workspace.

The Desktop crate is a thin Tauri adapter over the transport-neutral volum-server crate. The standalone apps/volumd/ binary uses that same core without compiling a GUI or credential-store runtime.

JavaScript applications and packages keep separate package-lock.json files. The root Makefile and package.json dispatch into those projects rather than treating the repository as one npm workspace.

Requirements

• Node.js 22.23.4, pinned in .nvmrc;
• Rust 1.99.1, pinned in rust-toolchain.toml;
• Tauri 2 platform prerequisites;
• platform SDKs for the native target you build;
• Docker with Compose v2 for server-image work;
• Make for the documented repository-level commands.

Confirm the core tools available on your machine:

make doctor

Desktop

make setup
make desktop-dev

make setup installs the locked dependencies for every JavaScript project. Cargo downloads Rust dependencies during the first Rust build.

Browser-only UI preview:

make desktop-web-dev

Other applications

Command	Purpose
make mobile-dev	Run the mobile browser preview
make mobile-ios-dev	Run the iOS application
make mobile-android-dev	Run the Android application
make server-admin-dev	Run the volumd browser administrator
make volumd-run	Run the headless server

See Mobile development and Server development for native prerequisites and isolated test-server setup.

Website and docs

Install website dependencies only:

make website-install

Run the landing page:

make website-dev

Run documentation:

make website-docs-dev

Build both into apps/website/dist/:

make website-build

Validation

make check
make compose-check

Use APP for a targeted command, such as make dev APP=mobile, make build APP=website, or make test APP=viewer. Run make help for all targets.

Shared API contract

packages/companion-api/openapi.json is the committed /api/v1 contract. Regenerate its deterministic TypeScript output after a contract change and verify that the generated file and implemented server routes agree:

npm --prefix packages/companion-api run generate
npm --prefix packages/companion-api run generate:check

Do not edit packages/companion-api/generated.ts by hand. The complete validation suite runs the drift check automatically.

Generated data and cleanup

Rust and native mobile builds can become large:

make disk-usage
make clean

make clean removes regenerable build output. make clean-all also removes node_modules; restore them with make setup. Cleanup preserves local environments, signing material, Goldie output, and saved Xcode archives. Docker cache cleanup is separate because it affects every local project.

Install the repository's Gitleaks pre-commit hook before contributing. Never commit .env files, device tokens, signing material, pairing payloads, or real private fixtures.