OpenSlides is a free, web-based presentation and assembly system for managing and projecting agenda, motions, and elections of assemblies. See https://openslides.com for more information.

The main deployment method is using Git, Docker and Docker Compose. You only need to have these tools installed and no further dependencies. If you want a simpler setup or are interested in developing, please refer to development instructions.

First, you have to clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/OpenSlides/OpenSlides.git --recurse-submodules
cd OpenSlides/

Note about migrating from version 3.3 or earlier: With OpenSlides 3.4 submodules and a Docker setup were introduced. If you ran into problems try to delete your settings.py. If you have an old checkout you need to check out the current master first and initialize all submodules:

git submodule update --init

You need to build the Docker images and have to setup some configuration. First, configure HTTPS by checking the Using HTTPS section. In this section are reasons why HTTPS is required for large deployments.

Go to docker subdirectory:

cd docker

Then build all images with this script:

./build.sh all

You must define a Django secret key in secrets/django.env, for example:

printf "DJANGO_SECRET_KEY='%s'\n" \
  "$(tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' < /dev/urandom | head -c 64)" > secrets/django.env

We also strongly recommend that you set a secure admin password but it is not strictly required. If you do not set an admin password, the default login credentials will be displayed on the login page. Setting the admin password:

cp secrets/adminsecret.env.example secrets/adminsecret.env
vi secrets/adminsecret.env

Afterwards, generate the configuration file:

m4 docker-compose.yml.m4 > docker-compose.yml

Finally, you can start the instance using docker-compose:

docker-compose up

OpenSlides is accessible on http://localhost:8000/ (or https, if configured).

Use can also use daemonized instance:

docker-compose up -d
docker-compose logs
docker-compose down

The main reason (next to obviously security ones) HTTPS is required originates from the need of HTTP/2. OpenSlides uses streaming responses to asynchronously send data to the client. With HTTP/1.1 one TCP-Connection per request is opened. Browsers limit the amount of concurrent connections (reference), so you are limited in opening tabs. HTTPS/2 just uses one connection per browser and eliminates these restrictions. The main point to use HTTPS is that browsers only use HTTP/2 if HTTPS is enabled.

Use common providers for retrieving a certificate and private key for your deployment. Place the certificate and private key in caddy/certs/cert.pem and caddy/certs/key.pem. To use a self-signed localhost certificate, you can execute caddy/make-localhost-cert.sh.

The certificate and key are put into the docker image into /certs/, so setting up these files needs to be done before calling ./build.sh. When you update the files, you must run ./build.sh proxy again. If you want to have a more flexible setup without the files in the image, you can also mount the folder or the certificate and key into the running containers if you wish to do so.

If both files are not present, OpenSlides will be configured to run with HTTP only. When mounting the files make sure, that they are present during the container startup.

Caddy, the proxy used, wants the user to persist the /data directory. If you are going to use HTTPS add a volume in your docker-compose.yml / docker-stack.yml persisting the /data directory.

When generating the docker-compose.yml, more settings can be adjusted in the docker/.env file. All changes for the backend are passed into djangos settings.py. You can find more information about most settings in the settings documentation. To generate the docker-compose.yml use this command:

cd docker
( set -a; source .env; m4 docker-compose.yml.m4 ) > docker-compose.yml

For an advanced database setup refer to the advanced configuration.

Feel free to open issues here on GitHub! Please use the right templates for bugs and features, and use them correctly. Pull requests are also welcome. For a general overview of the development setup refer the development instructions.

For security relevant issues do not create public issues and refer to our security policy.

OpenSlides uses the following projects or parts of them:

• several Python packages (see server/requirements/production.txt)
• several JavaScript packages (see client/package.json)

OpenSlides is Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), and distributed under the MIT License, see LICENSE file. The authors of OpenSlides are mentioned in the AUTHORS file.