The Navigator is a web-app that connects to any Digital Asset ledger and allows the user to inspect contracts, create contracts, and exercise choices.

The Navigator can be used in development mode (see below) or packaged into a "fat" JAR that includes the compiled frontend assets for distribution.

To learn more about developing the different parts of the Navigator see:

• Navigator Frontend README
• Navigator Backend README

To build a "fat" JAR of the Navigator that includes the pre-compiled front-end assets, run:

bazel build //navigator/backend:navigator-binary_deploy.jar

This produces a "fat" JAR bazel-bin/navigator/backend/navigator-binary_deploy.jar which can be run with:

java -jar bazel-bin/navigator/backend/navigator-binary_deploy.jar

Notable things in the Navigator build:

Manually written, must be consistent with backend/src/main/scala/com/digitalasset/navigator/graphql/GraphQLSchema.scala. Consistency is checked in a test.

Generated from backend/src/test/resources/schema.graphql with an external codegen tool. Currently, these files are checked in and updated with make update-graphql-types.

Code from frontend/src/**/*.ts*, compiled using TypeScript, and bundled with Webpack. Output includes:

• bundle-[hash].js: bundled frontend code, name uses content hasing.
• browsercheck-[hash].js: tiny module for checking browser compatibility, name uses content hasing.
• Several image and font files, referenced by the above modules. File names use content hashing.
• index.html: Single page application main entry, references the above modules.

Note: Browsers are instructed never to cache index.html, and indefinitely cache all other files. This is why content hashing is used.

Scala binary, compiled as a fat JAR. Code from backend/src/**/*.scala, bundled frontend code is copied to backend/src/main/resources/frontend.

The version is included as resource files in the Navigator fat jar. This is to reduce rebuild times when the version changes.

For developing frontend code, webpack-dev-server is used. This serves the current frontend code on a separate port, and does:

• Watch *.ts files for changes
• Perform incremental builds
• Send a push notification to the browser, automatically reloading the page when the build is finished.
• Forward network requests to a different port, where a Navigator backend is expected to run.

This is orders of magnitude faster than what the current Bazel build offers, so it is desirable to keep the webpack-dev-server setup working.

Note, the browser is instructed to cache assets based on the SDK version. During development this is too aggressive and you will need to manually refresh to see updates to the front-end.