die Nische

A KDE 3-inspired web desktop.

die Nische is an independent web desktop project inspired by the KDE 3 desktop environment. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or otherwise associated with KDE e.V. or the KDE Community.

The project was originally developed under the working title "KDE 3 Web Desktop".

See LEGAL.md for the project's identity, independence, historical KDE 3 inspiration, recreated-application, and virtual-filesystem notices.

Licensing

Original die Nische software is licensed under the MIT License. Original technical documentation and the nische archway sample artwork are licensed under CC BY 4.0. The die Nische name and project mark, bundled authored content, future Blog content, and future ARG content are not included in those grants unless explicitly stated. Third-party components remain under their respective upstream licenses.

See LICENSE, docs/licensing.md, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md, and docs/ASSET_PROVENANCE.md.

Requirements

Use a current Node.js LTS release and npm compatible with the committed package-lock.json. This package does not declare a project-specific engines field; the current development toolchain is Node.js 24.18.0 with npm 12.0.2.

Install

From a clean source checkout:

npm ci

Development

Start the Vite development server with:

npm run dev

Vite prints the local URL it selected (normally http://localhost:5173). The development startup reconciles repository-content timestamps, generates the VFS manifest, and watches content/home/user/** for later authoring changes.

Tests and Validation

The canonical project checks are:

npm run test:run
npm run lint
npm run typecheck
npm run build

The commands regenerate the ignored VFS manifest as needed. They do not start a persistent content watcher or rewrite repository metadata sidecars.

Production Build and Preview

Create the static production output with:

npm run build

The generated site is written to dist/. Preview that output locally with:

npm run preview

Vite prints the preview URL and selected port. dist/ is build output and is not tracked in the source repository.

Repository Content Model

content/home/user/** is the authoring input for the browser-based virtual filesystem. The generator scans the filesystem directly, so a file that is present locally is included in a local development or production build even when Git ignores its path. A fresh public source checkout therefore receives only the intentionally distributed seed content, while a private local checkout may contain additional authored site material.

The current public seed includes Welcome.md, Notes.txt, the required .kde3-meta.json sidecars, and the three nische-archway-*.png sample artworks. Future local Blog and ARG authoring directories under content/home/user/Documents/ are ignored by default so they can remain local until they are deliberately reviewed for a public source snapshot. Ignoring a file does not make its contents private: any file included in dist/ is public to website visitors. Never deploy passwords, credentials, private notes, or unpublished sensitive information.

Repository content and developer/application source are separate concepts. The public source repository contains only intentionally distributed VFS seed content; it does not promise to contain every local site-authored document.

Licensing and Legal References

The source-release legal and provenance policy remains in:

• LICENSE
• LEGAL.md
• docs/licensing.md
• THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
• docs/ASSET_PROVENANCE.md

This README does not change the scope of any license or the treatment of project-authored content, the project mark, or third-party material.

Deployment

The intended public release uses two separate Git repositories:

• Source repository: die-nische, containing source, tests, scripts, documentation, legal files, required assets, and intentionally public seed content.
• Deployment repository: a separate GitHub Pages repository, suggested as die-nische-site, containing the contents of dist/ only.

The deployment repository must not contain src/, tests, node_modules/, raw Markdown authoring files, private drafts, or the development repository's history unless a file is intentionally emitted into dist/. Static output is public website content; the deployment repository is not a secrecy boundary.

The safe initial workflow is local and manual:

1. Keep local authored content in the development checkout and review the source snapshot before publishing.
2. Install dependencies, run the validation commands, and build dist/.
3. Inspect dist/ as the public artifact.
4. Copy the contents of dist/ into a separate sibling deployment checkout.
5. Commit and push that deployment repository separately when it is ready.

For a sibling checkout, the copy operation can be:

rsync -a --delete --exclude '.git/' dist/ ../die-nische-site/

The .git/ exclusion is mandatory: --delete removes stale deployed files, but must never delete the deployment repository's Git metadata. Keep the deployment checkout outside this source repository; do not create a nested Git repository at die-nische-site/ inside the project.

The initial deployment model is local build -> separate deployment repository -> GitHub Pages branch publishing from the deployment repository's main branch and repository root. No GitHub repository, Pages setting, push, or GitHub Actions workflow is configured by this project yet. A source-repository CI build is intentionally deferred because ignored local authored content cannot be reproduced by public-source CI without a separate content supply.

Vite deployment base

The Vite configuration reads VITE_BASE_PATH and normalizes it to a leading and trailing slash. The default is /, which supports a root or user/organization GitHub Pages site. A project-site build can use the final repository path without changing source code, for example:

VITE_BASE_PATH=/die-nische-site/ npm run build

Do not bake a GitHub username or a temporary repository name into the source configuration. The final source/deployment repository names and whether the site is a root site or a project site remain owner decisions for a later phase.

Public Source History

The complete local development history is not the intended public source history. Earlier commits contain retired test fixtures and provenance-replaced assets that are absent from the current source snapshot. If any excluded or private material has ever been committed, .gitignore cannot remove it from history. The public release should therefore be initialized from a sanitized current snapshot in a new Git history; this local development repository must remain intact and must not be rewritten for that purpose.