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OnTrack

Initial Setup

Task Management (Microsoft Planner)

  • Ensure you have access to the Thoth Tech Microsoft Teams Channel. If not, please contact Morgaine so she can add you to the channel.
  • Navigate to the OnTrack channel.
  • Open the OnTrack Planner Board tab at the top to view and assign yourself to active tasks.
  • If you cannot see the board, contact Brain Dang to be added to the cohort’s workspace.

Configuring git (global)

If you haven’t already, you must configure git.

  1. Set your git username by git config –global user.name “FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME”, whereFIRST_NAME is your first name and LAST_NAME is your last name.
  2. Set your git email by git config –global user.email “YOUR_EMAIL”, where YOUR_EMAIL is your email. It is advised that you use your @users.noreply.github.com email address, which is, by default, <username>@users.noreply.github.com, where <username> is your GitHub username.

Cloning the Documentation

This enables you to contribute to the project documentation. You should also read the documentation contribution guidelines.

Terminal window

git clone https://github.com/thoth-tech/doubtfire-astro.git

WSL2

If you are on a Windows machine, then we recommend that you install WSL2.

Get OnTrack Running on Local Machine

You need a terminal that supports shell scripts (on Windows, you need WSL2, Msys2, or Cygwin).

  1. Fork doubtfire-deploy, doubtfire-api, and doubtfire-web
  2. Clone your doubtfire-deploy. Make sure to fetch submodules to get the sub-projects.

Terminal window

git clone –recurse-submodules https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/doubtfire-deploy

  1. cd into the directory.

Terminal window

cd doubtfire-deploy

  1. Open a terminal that supports sh scripts (on Windows, you require WSL2, Msys2, or Cygwin). Run the following command to set your fork as the remote.

Terminal window

./change_remotes.sh

  1. Your delivery lead provides you with the GitHub username to use in this command. This allows you to use git fetch task-view-submission, git pull task-view-submission, and git push task-view-submission.

Terminal window

git remote add task-view-submission https://github.com/PROVIDED_USERNAME/doubtfire-deploy

  1. You can now follow the remaining instructions, from instruction four, in the doubtfire-deploy contributing file.

What Next?

Now that your environment is set up, familiarise yourself with the current project goals and documentation.

  • Check the Planner Board: Navigate to the OnTrack Planner Board to view the current backlog.
  • T1 2026 Cohort Update: Assist in updating all project references from 2025 to the current T1 2026 cohort.
  • Refine Guides and Tutorials: Review existing setup files (like this one!) to ensure they match the current repository structure (‘doubtfire-astro’).
  • Techical Documentation:
    • Timestamp & Author: Implement a global “last updated” and “author” field for all documentation pages.
    • Repository Cleanup: Tidy the Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint documentation repositories to remove redundant legacy files.
  • Pull Request Management: Monitor and close out any remaining pull requests against the documentation repositories to keep the main branch clean.

Technical & Specialised Tasks

  • Security & Databases: If you have specialised knowledge in cyber-security or database adminstration, check the specialised tasks on the Planner board for implementation reviews.
  • Git Integration: Examine how Git can be better implemented on the back-end of the OnTrack product as part of the current sprint.

Helpful Points

  • If you are using Windows as your primary operating system and you have not downloaded, installed, and/or set-up MinGW, then a former team found the Linux subsystem WSL 2 and Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend as a helpful development environment.