Development

Rekindle runs the Cargo build and development lifecycle from Mix. Cargo remains the source of truth for Rust dependencies and incremental compilation.

Prepare the project

The installer adds the required Rust tooling setup to the Phoenix project's standard setup alias:

mix setup

Run Rekindle setup directly to prepare one target without the rest of the project setup:

mix rekindle.setup web
mix rekindle.setup desktop

For Web builds, Rekindle installs the pinned wasm-bindgen-cli release into a versioned user cache. A global installation is not required.

Check the project

Run the read-only diagnostic task:

mix rekindle.doctor

It checks the Rekindle configuration, Cargo metadata, target support, selected integration, and pinned Web tooling.

Run the project's standard precommit checks, including Rust formatting, Clippy, and library tests:

mix precommit

Run only the Rust checks with mix rekindle.check. Web library tests are compiled but not executed because browser test runners are application-specific.

Start development

Start Phoenix and Rekindle Web development together:

mix phx.server

The installer adds Rekindle.DevServer to the development endpoint. Its first request starts one supervised Web development runtime; repeated requests reuse that runtime. No Phoenix endpoint watcher entry or separate frontend command is required.

plug Rekindle.DevServer, otp_app: :my_app

Desktop development is not started by an HTTP request. Run it explicitly:

mix rekindle.dev desktop
mix rekindle.dev web,desktop

Run mix rekindle.dev or mix rekindle.dev web when Web development is needed without an HTTP server. Enabled targets in the main Rekindle configuration remain available to explicit and release builds regardless of the active development selection.

Files below client/ are watched and rebuilt through Cargo. A successful Web build publishes an immutable development generation for the polling browser runtime. For a desktop replacement, Rekindle stops the current process before starting the replacement. If the replacement exits, Rekindle reports the exit and waits for the next successful build.

Phoenix logs the start and completion time of each Rust build. While the first Web build is running, the browser shows a loading status; build and graphics startup failures are shown in the page without discarding the last successful generation.

Before a newer Web generation reloads the page, the runtime dispatches rekindle:before-reload on window. Applications may use this event to save serializable development state. It dispatches rekindle:ready after startup and rekindle:error when a build or startup fails. These hooks do not preserve state automatically.

mix rekindle.dev does not start Phoenix or another HTTP server. Web generations are exposed by the host-independent Rekindle.DevServer Plug, which can be mounted by any Plug-compatible host. Pass watch: false only when another process owns the development runtime.

Build explicitly

Build all Phoenix assets, including the Rekindle Web target:

mix assets.build

Build an enabled target without starting its development runtime:

mix rekindle.build web
mix rekindle.build desktop

Development artifacts and state are stored below .rekindle/dev.