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[Bug]: docker does not build properly when developing on Mac #2805
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Reference: github-starred/actual#2805
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Originally created by @RMcGhee on GitHub (Jan 11, 2026).
Verified issue does not already exist?
What happened?
When developing on a Mac, setting up the development env requires yarn to install various tools for type checking, linting, etc, and if you do that, node_modules is populated at various levels (root, desktop-client, etc). That works ok.
However, when you try to run yarn vrt:docker, the docker build will fail because of the docker compose, which copies everything in the root directory to /app, including the Mac specific node_modules. The fix for this is to delete node_modules at various levels, then rebuild with no cache, but then the next time you try to yarn typecheck on the Mac side, it will fail because it finds the linux version of the node_modules. Going back and forth like this is pretty annoying.
It may be that I'm missing some part of the dev env setup that would ameliorate this issue, but I think we're simply missing a .dockerignore that would prevent the copying of node_modules. I can create the PR for this if it's not the case that I'm missing a step in env setup.
How can we reproduce the issue?
Develop on a Mac. This is likely replicable on a linux distro that's different from the docker container, and windows.
Start with a clean repo and docker env (no docker built yet)
yarn install at the repo root.
test with yarn typecheck.
cd to packages/desktop-client
Try to build and start the docker env (HTTPS=true docker compose up --build).
It should fail with a node_modules error.
Delete node_modules at the repo root.
HTTPS=true docker compose up --build at the repo root.
The docker container builds and runs correctly.
Where are you hosting Actual?
Docker
What browsers are you seeing the problem on?
No response
Operating System
Mac OSX
@MatissJanis commented on GitHub (Jan 11, 2026):
The problem is that you are doing
cd packages/someplaceto run commands.Either run the commands available in root or run
yarn workspace @actual-app/web run some:child:command@RMcGhee commented on GitHub (Jan 11, 2026):
Appreciate the reply. Following the instructions here https://actualbudget.org/docs/contributing/development-setup/ and here: https://github.com/actualbudget/actual/tree/master/packages/desktop-client#visual-regression
Started over from a clean repo to test your suggestion, without changing directories from the root repo:
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but following the docs as closely as possible, and with your suggestion, I still have this issue. yarn start works fine, but the vrt cannot be done on a local/dev instance as the screenshots have a -darwin suffix on Mac. Only way for me to get the vrt to run correctly is with the docker container.
@MatissJanis commented on GitHub (Jan 11, 2026):
Try
"""
HTTPS=true yarn start
yarn vrt:docker
"""
@RMcGhee commented on GitHub (Jan 11, 2026):
BAM! That's the happy path, thanks.
I was definitely confused about which docker container was being used for what, the VRT docker container is a super lightweight playwright container, and has nothing to do with the dev docker container. I prefer not developing in the dev docker container, so I shouldn't need to go back and forth, thanks!