Thermite

Development setup

Run Thermite from source — Postgres, Mailpit, hot reload, and the full environment reference

Prerequisites

  • Rust (latest stable) — rustup.rs
  • Dioxus CLI — curl -sSL http://dioxus.dev/install.sh | sh
  • Bun — bun.sh, for Tailwind CSS
  • Docker — for PostgreSQL and Mailpit
  • just — cargo install just

Quick start

This page builds Thermite from source, which is what you want to work on it. To just run it, pull the image instead: Self-hosting.

1

Clone the repository

bash
git clone https://github.com/hauju/thermite-rs.git
cd thermite-rs
2

Bootstrap your env file

bash
just bootstrap

Copies .env.example to .env and fills in a freshly generated SESSION_SECRET. It refuses to overwrite an existing .env.

The defaults work as-is for local development. Set THERMITE_ADMIN_EMAIL and THERMITE_ADMIN_PASSWORD and that is your sign-in — no identity provider to stand up. An external one is optional; see Authentication.

3

Start the infrastructure

bash
just init

Brings up PostgreSQL 18 on 5433 and Mailpit with SMTP on 1028 and its web UI on 8028. The ports are offset off the defaults so the stack runs alongside other projects' containers, and every one is bound to 127.0.0.1 — a dev database with default credentials is never reachable from the network.

Migrations live in migrations/, are embedded in the binary, and apply automatically on first boot. There is no separate migrate step.

4

Install frontend dependencies

bash
bun install
5

Run the development server

bash
just serve

Thermite comes up on http://localhost:8080, hot-reloading on change and compiling Tailwind as it goes.

Signing in

Thermite signs people in itself by default. Set the operator credential and there is nothing else to run:

bash
THERMITE_ADMIN_EMAIL=you@example.com
THERMITE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=a-long-random-one

The password is hashed once at boot and never stored — the value in the environment is the only copy. Your user row is created on the first successful sign-in, and once you are in you can enroll a passkey and stop typing it. With SMTP configured, the login page also offers an emailed code, which is a way in on its own, so an instance may set SMTP and no admin credential.

Setting FERRISKEY_URL switches authentication to FerrisKey OIDC instead, for a deployment that already runs an identity provider — see Authentication. That variable is the whole switch; there is no mode to set.

Send it a first event

Create a project in the dashboard, copy its DSN from Project settings → DSN keys, and point any Sentry SDK at it. Thermite speaks Sentry's wire protocol, so there is nothing to install beyond the SDK you would have used anyway — see the SDKs guide.

Project commands

Command Description
just serve Development server with hot reload
just init Start Postgres and Mailpit
just check Everything CI runs: fmt, clippy, test
just test Workspace tests, plus the app crate under its server feature
just clippy cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
just prepare Regenerate the committed sqlx query metadata
just tw Build Tailwind CSS manually
just icons Re-render the favicon and PWA icons from their SVG sources

Environment variables

Changing the database schema

Queries use sqlx's compile-time-checked macros, so column names and types are verified against the schema when you build. The metadata lives in .sqlx/ and is committed, which is what lets a fresh clone build with no database running.

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