tailscale/cmd/tsconnect/README.md

tsconnect

The tsconnect command builds and serves the static site that is generated for the Tailscale Connect JS/WASM client.

Development

To start the development server:

./tool/go run ./cmd/tsconnect dev

The site is served at http://localhost:9090/. JavaScript, CSS and Go wasm package changes can be picked up with a browser reload. Server-side Go changes require the server to be stopped and restarted. In development mode the state the Tailscale client state is stored in sessionStorage and will thus survive page reloads (but not the tab being closed).

Deployment

To build the static assets necessary for serving, run:

./tool/go run ./cmd/tsconnect build

To serve them, run:

./tool/go run ./cmd/tsconnect serve

By default the build output is placed in the dist/ directory and embedded in the binary, but this can be controlled by the -distdir flag. The -addr flag controls the interface and port that the serve listens on.

Library / NPM Package

The client is also available as an NPM package. To build it, run:

./tool/go run ./cmd/tsconnect build-pkg

That places the output in the pkg/ directory, which may then be uploaded to a package registry (or installed from the file path directly).

To do two-sided development (on both the NPM package and code that uses it), run:

./tool/go run ./cmd/tsconnect dev-pkg

This serves the module at http://localhost:9090/pkg/pkg.js and the generated wasm file at http://localhost:9090/pkg/main.wasm. The two files can be used as drop-in replacements for normal imports of the NPM module.