Standing Up Backstage

40 MINS

Running the Backstage app

The Backstage app is created, the database is set up — now we’re ready to rock and roll 🎸!

Backstage apps running locally have two processes — the backend and the frontend. To start these at the same time, run this command in a terminal window:

<span class="line"><span style="color:#79B8FF">cd</span><span style="color:#9ECBFF"> your-backstage-app</span></span>
<span class="line"><span style="color:#B392F0">yarn</span><span style="color:#9ECBFF"> dev</span></span>
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The Backstage app will start both the backend and frontend app.

Screenshot with a lot of logging, ending with the message saying Webpack completed successfully

The Backstage app is ready once you see this line in the terminal:

<span class="line"><span style="color:#E1E4E8">[0] Webpack compiled successfully</span></span>
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Go to http://localhost:3000/ in a browser and you should see the Backstage software catalog with some sample software components.

When you see the Backstage Software Catalog appear, you've just launched your very first Backstage app. Yay! Just browse a bit and enjoy your hard work. But not too long, there's more things to do!

A closer look at the backend and frontend processes

Backstage apps running locally have two processes — the backend Express server, and a webpack-development-server to run the React frontend. These processes can also be started separately if you wish, by running the respective commands in different terminal windows:

<span class="line"><span style="color:#B392F0">yarn</span><span style="color:#9ECBFF"> start-backend</span></span>
<span class="line"><span style="color:#B392F0">yarn</span><span style="color:#9ECBFF"> start</span></span>
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