Due to reasons unknown, the production build – which is minified using
webpack – may sometimes put load the CSS files in a different order than
the development build, causing the frontend app to look different between
development and production
(see e.g. this issue).
Therefore, it is essential to always check
both, development and production build, before submitting and merging a
change.
The production build is created via
npm run build
Now, typically we deliver this build via the Flask backend. But there is also
an easier way to quickly achieve the same thing (which then also avoids
running into Flask configuration errors): We can simply use serve. It needs
to be installed once, globally:
npm install -g serve
Then, from the pyqmix_frontend directory, simply invoke
serve build/
and you're ready to view the app in the browser.
It's possible to bring up the Flask backend even when no pump system is
connected to the computer. To do so, set the environment variable
PYQMIX_TEST_MODE to 1 or True before starting Flask.