This doc explains how to go about running Postal in development to allow you to make contributions to the project.
You will need a MySQL database server to get started. Postal needs to be able to make databases within that server whenever new mail servers are created so the permissions that you use should be suitable for that.
You'll also need Ruby. Postal currently uses Ruby 3.2.2. Install that using whichever version manager takes your fancy - rbenv, asdf, rvm etc.
You'll need to clone the repository
git clone git@github.com:postalserver/postal
Once cloned, you can install the Ruby dependencies using bundler.
bundle install
Configuration is handled using a config file. This lives in config/postal/postal.yml. An example configuration file is provided in config/examples/development.yml. This example is for development use only and not an example for production use.
You'll also need a key for signing. You can generate one of these like this:
openssl genrsa -out config/postal/signing.key 2048
If you're running the tests (and you probably should be), you'll find an example file for test configuration in config/examples/test.yml. This should be placed in config/postal/postal.test.yml with the appropriate values.
If you prefer, you can configure Postal using environment variables. These should be placed in .env or .env.test as apprpriate.
The neatest way to run postal is to ensure that ./bin is your $PATH and then use one of the following commands.
bin/dev- will run all components of the application using Foremanbin/postal- will run the Postal binary providing access to running individual components or other tools.
Use the commands below to initialize your database and make your first user.
postal initialize
postal make-user