Developing with the Open-Source backend

Convex offers an open-source version of its backend, allowing developers to perform local development of applications built on the platform, providing benefits such as lower latency, faster push times, and offline capabilities. To begin, developers need to download and run the appropriate Convex backend binary for their operating system, which can be executed from the terminal. Once running, the local OSS backend can be accessed using specific commands that require a URL and an admin key, both of which can be conveniently managed with a Justfile from the open-source repo. Developers can then run their frontend using appropriate commands, with the application identifying the local URL from a configuration file. Although upgrading the local backend may necessitate wiping the local database, a variety of CLI commands can be executed similarly to cloud development processes. Convex supports building full-stack projects with features like cloud functions, databases, file storage, and real-time updates.