Hello there!
I was trying to experiment a bit and rebrand duplicati (change css etc) and I was wondering how can I run Duplicati locally without downloading it from an exe/msi (I am using Windows), that way if I do a change in the CSS code or Javascript to be updated instantly.
Do I need to have the whole repository of duplicati installed? Only the builded zip file?
What configuration do I need to run it so that I can see the code changes real time?
If you only change html, css and js, you can install duplicati normally. It is important that no updates are installed (they would be in AppData/Local/Duplicati/updates), so it’s best to use the installer for the latest version again, even if it is already installed.
The files for the web UI will be in the install folder under webroot, and you can change those files as you wish. You need to disable/clear the browser cache to see changes when you made them.
For the CSS you probably want to modify the original .less files and compile them to .css with Less CSS.
You can also build and run duplicati completely from the GitHub repository, but that needs Visual Studio and some setup.
There are some oem folders intended for branding changes, but I can’t tell you how those are supposed to work.
Branding and OEM customization has some information, if you’re willing to get in pretty deep on this.
TBH I wasn’t sure how an install method makes a difference to modifying files after install.
I’m not sure if this helps any, but you can just extract .zip file directly. That’s how I install.
Thank you all for your replies!
Rebranding Duplicati can be a bit of a rabbit hole since you have to dig into the web UI’s source files and make sure the styles carry over correctly. One thing that often trips people up is how the custom CSS/LESS is being handled during the build. If you’re tweaking the theme colors or layout, it’s really helpful to test your LESS variables outside of the main build environment first to make sure they’re compiling the way you expect. I’ve been using LESS Compiler - Compile LESS to CSS Online for this - it’s a quick way to verify that your style overrides won’t break the UI before you recompile the whole project.
Also, don’t forget to clear your browser cache after you deploy the changes, or you might drive yourself crazy wondering why the old logo is still showing up!