apps-development.md

Start development of apps

Nextcloud applications can be developed directly under volumes/nextcloud/apps-extra. That directory may contain one application or dozens of applications required by the development environment.

For isolated workers, an external directory can be used as the worker workspace. The workspace is mounted as the complete /var/www/html/apps-extra directory, so NCDD does not need to know which applications it contains.

Local apps-extra workflow

Clone or create applications under:

volumes/nextcloud/apps-extra/

Then use the nextcloud container to install dependencies or run development commands:

docker compose exec -u www-data nextcloud bash
cd apps-extra/my_app
composer install
npm ci

Worker workspace

A workspace is simply a directory containing the applications needed by that worker:

/tmp/workspaces/issue-123/
├── app_a/
├── app_b/
└── any_other_app/

Start an isolated worker with that directory:

NCDD_WORKSPACE=/tmp/workspaces/issue-123 \
DB_TYPE=sqlite \
sh ./dev-worker issue-123 up

The complete workspace is mounted at:

/var/www/html/apps-extra

NCDD does not assign a primary application, manage application repositories or limit how many applications the workspace contains. Clones, Git worktrees and other source layouts are the responsibility of the caller.

For an interactive development shell, use the worker command that keeps TTY allocation enabled:

NCDD_WORKSPACE=/tmp/workspaces/issue-123 \
DB_TYPE=sqlite \
sh ./dev-worker issue-123 shell

Set NCDD_SHELL if a shell other than bash is desired.

Application-specific setup remains owned by the application repository or the agent operating the worker. Use exec for non-interactive commands:

NCDD_WORKSPACE=/tmp/workspaces/issue-123 \
DB_TYPE=sqlite \
sh ./dev-worker issue-123 exec sh -lc \
  'cd /var/www/html/apps-extra/app_a && composer install'

Worker runtime state remains under .workers/<worker-id>; destroying a worker never deletes its external workspace.

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