React is a Javascript framework so the underlying webserving infrastructure is not super important. However, Roadrunner react uses webpack and node package manager to handle both compiling the code and management of the frontend dependencies. Thus, you need node.js set up.
First install nvm for node.js version management.
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.31.0/install.sh | bash
TODO(awong): add instructions for install npm.
One node.js and npm is set up bootstrap the envrionment by calling.
npm install
to create populate your node_modules from the dependencies listed in packages.json and the versions in npm-shrinkwrap.json
You will need to call npm install any time package.json or npm-shrinkwrap.json is modified.
To server the webpages, run
npm start
This will serve the public diretory on port 8080 using the webpack-dev-server. The webpack-dev-server will watch all files under src transitively referenced by src/client.js and run webpack to build public/js/generated/bundle.js
Visit http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/ to load the app with webpack "hot reload" support (change to the source code are pushed and merged into the running application in the browser without having to refresh the page).
Visiting http://localhost:8080 will show the app w/o the hot reloading.