How do I bundle my SAFE application?

When developing your SAFE application, the local runtime experience uses WebPack to run the client and redirect API calls to the server on a different port. However, when you deploy your application, you'll need to run your Saturn server which will serve up statically-built client resources (HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc.).

I'm using the standard template

1. Run the FAKE script

If you created your SAFE app using the recommended defaults, your application already has a FAKE script which will do the bundling for you. You can create a bundle using the following command:

dotnet run Bundle

This will build and package up both the client and server and place them into the /deploy folder at the root of the repository.

See here for more details on this build target.

I'm using the minimal template

If you created your SAFE app using the minimal option, you need to bundle up the client and server separately.

1. Bundle the Client (Fable) application

Execute the following commands:

npm install

dotnet tool restore 

dotnet fable src/Client --run webpack

This will build the client project and copy all outputs into /deploy/public.

2. Bundle the Server (Saturn) application

Execute the following commands:

cd src/Server
dotnet publish -c release -o ../../deploy

This will bundle the server project and copy all outputs into the deploy folder.

Testing the bundle

Navigate to the deploy folder at the root of your repository.
Run the Server.exe application.
Navigate in your browser to http://localhost:5000.

You should now see your SAFE application.