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wakapi/docs/advanced_setup.md
Ferdinand Mütsch 31013ad986 docs: update readme
docs: mention tinyproxy in advanced setup instructions
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Advanced Setup

This page contains instructions for additional setup options, none of which are mandatory.

Optional: Client-side proxy

Most Wakatime plugins work in a way that, for every heartbeat to send, the plugin calls your local wakatime-cli (a small Python program that is automatically installed when installing a Wakatime plugin) with a few command-line arguments, which is then run as a new process. Inside that process, a heartbeat request is forged and sent to the backend API Wakapi in this case.

While this is convenient for plugin developers, as they do not have to deal with sending HTTP requests, etc., it comes with a minor drawback. Because the CLI process shuts down after each request, its TCP connection is closed as well. Accordingly, TCP connections cannot be re-used and every single heartbeat request is inevitably preceded by the SYN + SYN ACK + ACK sequence for establishing a new TCP connection as well as a handshake for establishing a new TLS session.

While this certainly does not hurt, it is still a bit of overhead. You can avoid that by setting up a local reverse proxy on your machine, that keeps running as a daemon and can therefore keep a continuous connection.

Option 1: tinyproxy forward proxy (Linux, Mac only)

In this example we use tinyproxy as a small, easy-to-install proxy server, written in C, that runs on your local machine.

  1. Install tinyproxy
    • Fedora / RHEL: dnf install tinyproxy
    • Debian / Ubuntu: apt install tinyproxy
    • MacOS: Install from MacPorts
  2. Enable and start it
    • Linux: sudo systemctl start tinyproxy && sudo systemctl enable tinyproxy
    • Mac: Not sure, sorry ¯_(ツ)_/¯
  3. Update ~/.wakatime.cfg
    • Set proxy = http://localhost:8888
  4. Done
    • All Wakapi requests are passed through tinyproxy now, which keeps a TCP connection with the server open for some time

Option 2: Caddy reverse proxy (Win, Linux, Mac)

In this example, we misuse Caddy, which is a web server and reverse proxy, to fulfil the above scenario.

  1. Install Caddy
    • When installing manually, don't forget to set up a systemd service to start Caddy on system startup
  2. Create a Caddyfile
    # /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
    
    http://localhost:8070 {
        reverse_proxy * {
            to https://wakapi.dev  # <-- substitute your own Wakapi host here
            header_up Host {http.reverse_proxy.upstream.host}
            header_down -Server
        }
    }
    
  3. Restart Caddy
  4. Verify that you can access http://localhost:8070/api/health
  5. Update ~/.wakatime.cfg
    • Set api_url = http://localhost:8070/api/heartbeat
  6. Done
    • All Wakapi requests are passed through Caddy now, which keeps a TCP connection with the server open for some time