Upon creation of your codespace you should have [build tools](https://github.com/electron/build-tools) installed and an initialized gclient checkout of Electron. In order to build electron you'll need to run the following command.
The initial build will take ~8 minutes. Incremental builds are substantially quicker. If you pull changes from upstream that touch either the `patches` folder or the `DEPS` folder you will have to run `e sync` in order to keep your checkout up to date.
Codespaces doesn't lean very well into gclient based checkouts, the directory structure is slightly strange. There are two locations for the `electron` checkout that both map to the same files under the hood.
```graphql
# Primary gclient checkout container
/workspaces/gclient/*
└─ src/* - # Chromium checkout
└─ electron - # Electron checkout
# Symlinked Electron checkout (identical to the above)
/workspaces/electron
```
## Goma
If you are a maintainer [with Goma access](../docs/development/goma.md) it should be automatically configured and authenticated when you spin up a new codespaces instance. You can validate this by checking `e d goma_auth info` or by checking that your build-tools configuration has a goma mode of `cluster`.
## Running Electron
You can run Electron in a few ways. If you just want to see if it launches:
```bash
# Enter an interactive JS prompt headlessly
xvfb-run e start -i
```
But if you want to actually see Electron you will need to use the built-in VNC capability. If you click "Ports" in codespaces and then open the `VNC web client` forwarded port you should see a web based VNC portal in your browser. When you are asked for a password use `builduser`.
Once in the VNC UI you can open `Applications -> System -> XTerm` which will open a VNC based terminal app and then you can run `e start` like normal and Electron will open in your VNC session.
