Outline Server
This repository has all the code needed to create and manage Outline servers on
DigitalOcean. An Outline server runs instances of Shadowsocks proxies and
provides an API used by the Outline Manager application.
Go to https://getoutline.org for ready-to-use versions of the software.
Components
The system comprises the following components:
-
Outline Server: a proxy server that runs a Shadowsocks instance for each
access key and a REST API to manage the access keys. The Outline Server runs
in a Docker container in the host machine.See
src/shadowbox -
Outline Manager: an Electron application that
can create Outline Servers on the cloud and talks to their access key
management API to manage who has access to the server. -
Metrics Server: a REST service that the Outline Server talks to
if the user opts-in to anonymous metrics sharing.
Code Prerequisites
In order to build and run the code, you need the following installed:
Then you need to install all the NPM package dependencies:
yarn
Note: If you are using root (not recommended on your dev machine, maybe in a container), you need to add { "allow_root": true } to your /root/.bowerrc file.
This project uses Yarn workspaces.
Build System
We have a very simple build system based on package.json scripts that are called using yarn
and a thin wrapper for what we call build "actions".
We've defined a do package.json script that takes an action parameter:
yarn do $ACTION
This command will define a do_action() function and call ${ACTION}_action.sh, which must exist.
The called action script can use do_action to call its dependencies. The $ACTION parameter is
always resolved from the project root, regardless of the caller location.
The idea of do_action is to keep the build logic next to where the relevant code is.
It also defines two environmental variables:
- ROOT_DIR: the root directory of the project, as an absolute path.
- BUILD_DIR: where the build output should go, as an absolute path.
Build output
Building creates the following directories under build/:
web_app/: The Manager web app.static/: The standalone web app static files. This is what one deploys to a web server or runs with Electron.
electron_app/: The launcher desktop Electron appstatic/: The Manager Electron app to run with the electron command-linebundled/: The Electron app bundled to run standalone on each platformpackaged/: The Electron app bundles packaged as single files for distribution
invite_page: the Invite Pagestatic: The standalone static files to be deployed
shadowbox: The Proxy Server
The directories have subdirectories for intermediate output:
ts/: Autogenerated Typescript filesjs/: The output from compiling Typescript codebrowserified/: The output of browserifying the JavaScript code
To clean up:
yarn run clean