Automerge

Automerge is a library which provides fast implementations of several different CRDTs, a compact compression format for these CRDTs, and a sync protocol for efficiently transmitting those changes over the network. The objective of the project is to support local-first applications in the same way that relational databases support server applications - by providing mechanisms for persistence which allow application developers to avoid thinking about hard distributed computing problems. Automerge aims to be PostgreSQL for your local-first app.

If you're looking for documentation on the JavaScript implementation take a look at https://automerge.org/docs/hello/. This repository also contains the core Rust library which is compiled to WebAssembly and exposed in JavaScript. The docs for this library can be found on docs.rs. Finally, there is a C library in rust/automerge-c, take a look at the README there for more details.

If you're familiar with CRDTs and interested in the design of Automerge in particular take a look at https://automerge.org/automerge-binary-format-spec.

Finally, if you want to talk to us about this project please join our Discord server!

Status

This project is formed of a core Rust implementation which is exposed via FFI in javascript+WASM, C, and soon other languages. Alex (@alexjg) and Orion (@orionz) are working full time on maintaining automerge, other members of Ink and Switch are also contributing time and there are several other maintainers. We are currently focusing on a new implementation of the internals (with no API change) which achieves around a 100x reduction in memory usage.

In general we try and respect semver.

JavaScript

A stable release of the javascript package is currently available as @automerge/automerge@2.0.0 where. pre-release verisions of the 2.0.1 are available as 2.0.1-alpha.n.

3.0 Beta

There is a beta version of Automerge 3.0 available as @automerge/automerge@3.0.0-beta.<n>, where n is the latest version - look at npm for the latest version.

The biggest difference from 2.0 with this release is that it uses enormously less memory (up to 100x less) than 2.0. There are also some incompatible differences from 2.0. The concrete changes you will need to make to migrate to the beta depend on if you were using the next API

If you are using next (i.e. you use string for collaborative text):

replace any import .. from "@automerge/automerge/next" with import .. from "@automerge/automerge"
replace any import .. from "@automerge/automerge/slim/next" with import .. from "@automerge/automerge/slim"
replace any mention of RawString with ImmutableString and isRawString with isImmutableString

If you are not using next (i.e you use Text for collaborative text)

update any code which uses Text to use string and Automerge.splice
update any code which uses string to use ImmutableString

Rust

The rust codebase is currently oriented around producing a performant backend for the Javascript wrapper and as such the API for Rust code is low level and not well documented. We will be returning to this over the next few months but for now you will need to be comfortable reading the tests and asking questions to figure out how to use it. If you are looking to build rust applications which use automerge you may want to look into autosurgeon

Repository Organisation

./rust - the rust rust implementation and also the Rust components of platform specific wrappers (e.g. automerge-wasm for the WASM API or automerge-c for the C FFI bindings)
./javascript - The javascript library which uses automerge-wasm internally but presents a more idiomatic javascript interface
./scripts - scripts which are useful to maintenance of the repository. This includes the scripts which are run in CI.
./img - static assets for use in .md files

Building

To build this codebase you will need:

rust
node
yarn

And if you are interested in building the automerge-c library

cmake
cmocka
doxygen
ninja

You will also need to install the following with cargo install

wasm-bindgen-cli
wasm-opt
cargo-deny

And ensure you have added the wasm32-unknown-unknown target for rust cross-compilation.

The various subprojects (the rust code, the wrapper projects) have their own build instructions, but to run the tests that will be run in CI you can run ./scripts/ci/run.

For macOS

These instructions worked to build locally on macOS 13.1 (arm64) as of Nov 29th 2022.

# clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/automerge/automerge
cd automerge

# install rustup
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# install homebrew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# install cmake, node, cmocka
brew install cmake node cmocka

# install yarn
npm install --global yarn

# install javascript dependencies
yarn --cwd ./javascript

# install rust dependencies
cargo install wasm-bindgen-cli wasm-opt cargo-deny

# get nightly rust to produce optimized automerge-c builds
rustup toolchain install nightly
rustup component add rust-src --toolchain nightly

# add wasm target in addition to current architecture
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

# Run ci script
./scripts/ci/run

If your build fails to find cmocka.h you may need to teach it about homebrew's installation location:

export CPATH=/opt/homebrew/include
export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib
./scripts/ci/run

Nix Flake

If you have Nix installed, there is a flake available with all of the dependencies configured and some helper scripts.

$ nix develop

  ____                                          _
 / ___|___  _ __ ___  _ __ ___   __ _ _ __   __| |___
| |   / _ \| '_ ` _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` / __|
| |__| (_) | | | | | | | | | | | (_| | | | | (_| \__ \
 \____\___/|_| |_| |_|_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_|___/


build:deno          | Build Deno-wrapped Wasm library
build:host          | Build for aarch64-darwin
build:node          | Build JS-wrapped Wasm library
build:wasi          | Build for Wasm32-WASI
build:wasm:nodejs   | Build for wasm32-unknown-unknown with Node.js bindgings
build:wasm:web      | Build for wasm32-unknown-unknown with web bindings
docs:build:host     | Refresh the docs
docs:build:wasm     | Refresh the docs with the wasm32-unknown-unknown target
docs:open:host      | Open refreshed docs
docs:open:wasm      | Open refreshed docs
# ✂️  SNIP ✂️

$ rustc --version
rustc 1.82.0 (f6e511eec 2024-10-15) # latest at time of writing

Contributing

Please try and split your changes up into relatively independent commits which change one subsystem at a time and add good commit messages which describe what the change is and why you're making it (err on the side of longer commit messages). git blame should give future maintainers a good idea of why something is the way it is.

Releasing

There are four artefacts in this repository which need releasing:

The @automerge/automerge NPM package
The @automerge/automerge-wasm NPM package
The automerge deno crate
The automerge rust crate

JS Packages

The NPM package is released automatically by CI tooling whenever a new Github release is created. This means that the process for releasing an ew JS version is:

Bump the version in @automerge/automerge also in javascript/package.json
Put in a PR to main with the version bump, wait for tests to run and merge to main
Once merged to main, create a tag of the form js/automerge-<version>
Create a new release on Github referring to the tag in question

This does depend on an access token available as NPM_TOKEN in the actions environment, this token is generated with a 30 day expiry date so needs (manually) refreshing every so often.

Rust Package

This is much easier, but less automatic. The steps to release are:

Bump the version in automerge/Cargo.toml
Push a PR and merge once clean
Tag the release as rust/automerge@<version>
Push the tag to the repository
Publish the release with cargo publish