Get Artemis running locally

Prerequisites

Tool	Version	Note
JDK	25	Pinned by the Gradle toolchain
Node	24.20.0 or newer	Pinned in gradle.properties and package.json
pnpm	12.5.1	Pinned by the packageManager field; activate with corepack enable
Docker	current	Required for the database and for server tests

Run corepack enable once. It activates the exact pnpm version the repository pins, which avoids a whole category of lockfile arguments.

On macOS, Homebrew's openjdk@25 is keg-only, so nothing finds it after installation. Register it with the system once, rather than exporting JAVA_HOME in every shell:

brew install openjdk@25
sudo ln -sfn "$(brew --prefix openjdk@25)/libexec/openjdk.jdk" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk-25.jdk
./gradlew --version   # confirms Gradle picks up JVM 25

Install dependencies

corepack enable
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile

Use --frozen-lockfile unless you are deliberately changing dependencies, in which case plain pnpm install lets the lockfile update.

Two ways to run

Full stack in one command. Slower to restart, fine for server work where the client rarely changes:

./gradlew bootRun

Server and client separately. This is what you want for client work, because the Angular dev server does hot module replacement:

./gradlew bootRun -x webapp   # terminal 1: server only
pnpm start                    # terminal 2: Angular dev server with HMR

The client is then on port 9000 and the server on 8080.

Expect roughly thirty seconds of startup. That is the normal cold start, not a symptom. Disabling feature modules barely changes it, because most of it is Spring context work that lazy initialisation already defers.

Test users

The users you log in as locally are seeded by Liquibase, not created by a script. src/main/resources/config/liquibase/e2e/users.csv provides exactly seven, each with its login as the password:

Login	Role in the Playwright suite
artemis_admin	admin
artemis_test_user_1	studentOne
artemis_test_user_2	studentTwo
artemis_test_user_3	studentThree
artemis_test_user_4	studentFour
artemis_test_user_6	tutor
artemis_test_user_16	instructor

The numbering is deliberately not contiguous, so do not assume artemis_test_user_5 exists. The names are exported from src/test/playwright/support/users.ts. A database that has run the migrations already has these users, and src/test/playwright/init/importUsers.spec.ts verifies them rather than creating anything.

supporting_scripts/create_test_users.sh is a different, much smaller thing: it creates three users, aa01aaa through aa03aaa, through the admin REST API, and it takes the server as a required argument:

supporting_scripts/create_test_users.sh localhost:8080

Called without that argument it POSTs to http:// and silently does nothing. You do not need it for normal development or for Playwright.

Seeing outgoing mail

Artemis only sends mail when it is configured to. To view what it would send, run a local Mailpit alongside the server and point the mail configuration at it. See documentation/docs/developer/mailpit-setup.mdx.

When it will not start

"Configure meaningful values for info.operatorName ...". A core node under the prod profile refuses to start without info.operatorName, info.operatorAdminName and info.universityName, even with telemetry off, unless info.testServer is true. Development profiles never hit it; locally it comes from the Artemis (Server, Prod, LocalCI) run configuration or a prod Docker setup. Set all three in application-local.yml (empty and template values such as Admin, Your University or <name> are rejected), or set info.testServer: true.

"Unable to determine Dialect". The Spring profile set does not include a database profile, or an autoconfigure.exclude is replacing rather than merging the expected exclusions.

The server logs "Started ArtemisApp" but then shuts down. A Spring Boot and Spring Cloud version mismatch does exactly this. The two are coupled: a Boot minor bump needs the matching Cloud release train. Both are pinned in gradle.properties.

Aggregate health reports DOWN. This does not by itself mean the server is broken. Check the readiness and liveness endpoints and look for "Started ArtemisApp" in the log; a single unconfigured optional integration pulls the aggregate down.

Port already in use. ./run-e2e-tests-local-fast.sh --stop frees 8080 and 9000 by killing the server and client. The LocalVC SSH listener on 7921 lives inside the server JVM, so it goes with it.

Running things

./gradlew test -x webapp        # server tests, needs Docker
pnpm run vitest                 # client tests, watch mode
./run-e2e-tests-local-fast.sh   # E2E, brings up everything it needs
pnpm run lint                   # client lint
./gradlew spotlessApply         # fix Java formatting

Full setup documentation, including IDE configuration and the optional integrations: documentation/docs/developer/setup.mdx.