Is it possible to build on a Mac?

[rdingwell]

We are looking at adding support for the $process-message operation however many of our developers are on Macs. Is it possible to build the fhir-server on a mac? Are there any configuration changes needed?

[mikaelweave]

Hi @rdingwell! I build the solution on my Mac often (both in Visual Studio and VS Code). It's totally possible - it's just not the normal flow most Devs use.

What backend persistence type are you using? The challenge can be debugging.

[mikaelweave]

@rdingwell Yeah it is a pain to get it right. 👎🏽 I think it took me a couple of days. I ended up using this guide for my machine to get it to work. You also can disable SSL for dev environments only if you get stuck (see info in the article).

[rdingwell]

@mikaelweave That is what I followed, I'm using the linux emulator via docker. What is not mentioned and what really caught me however is the emulator generates a new certificate every time you start it. So I had the cert I initially pulled out of the docker container loaded into my keychain but then ended up restarting the container for some reason and then there was a new cert so all of the ssl connections where failing still.

Right now I can run all of the unit tests but the integration tests are another story. SQL server backed tests want to be authenticated via kerberos so those fail. The Cosmos backed tests fail while trying to initialize the db.

The errors that I am seeing look like this.

crit: Microsoft.Health.Fhir.CosmosDb.Features.Storage.FhirCosmosClientInitializer[0]
Cosmos DB Database health and collections initialization failed
System.Net.Http.HttpRequestException: The SSL connection could not be established, see inner exception.
---> System.IO.IOException: Received an unexpected EOF or 0 bytes from the transport stream.
...
...
...
at Microsoft.Health.Fhir.CosmosDb.Features.Storage.FhirCosmosClientInitializer.InitializeDataStore(CosmosClient client, CosmosDataStoreConfiguration cosmosDataStoreConfiguration, IEnumerable`1 collectionInitializers) in /Users/bobd/projects/ms-fhir-server/src/Microsoft.Health.Fhir.CosmosDb/Features/Storage/FhirCosmosClientInitializer.cs:line 128

I'm not sure why the unit tests would run fine while the integration tests seem to have an issue connecting. It also hangs for a long time before erroring out like that.

[rdingwell]

Speaking of hanging. I have had an integration test running since yesterday that has not stopped or errored out. Looks like it got into some sort of condition where it could not proceed. Maybe a thread locking issue or something like that?

[mikaelweave]

The SSL errors generally mean system or code configuration issues. I used these instructions just now and the Cosmos tests worked. Make sure you look for the cert named "localhost" after you import.

Also, our integration tests do have the occasional transient error. Try to restart everything and run the test again. Please file an issue if you see a problem with a specific test or test area!

[rdingwell]

Yeah, that is the way I configured the certificates. It's just odd that the unit tests pass, showing that the configuration is fine, but the integration tests hang and then fail, or just hang.

[mikaelweave]

@rdingwell - are all the integration tests failing or just some of them?

[mikaelweave]

Hi @rdingwell - are you able to build on your Mac now?

[rdingwell]

Hey @mikaelweave , I couldn't tell you if it was all of the integration tests or not that were failing or hanging. After the tests sitting there spinning for well over an hour anytime I ran them I would simply kill the process. I was never able to get the integration tests to work.

We were going to build out a $process-message component to support a site that was using the MS fhir server for some piloting activities we are working on. To support the pilot and speed things up a bit they installed hapi server which has support for $process-message so I have not revisited attempting to build again.

Now that some of the initial piloting work is over we may turn our attention back to this. Do you know if there is any plan on adding $process-message support in upcoming builds? I think our project lead is also looking for contacts at MS that she could engage with on the some of this work as well, if you know anyone she could reach out to that would be great. Thanks