Hello everyone,
I currently have a very big problem which I could not solve even after a few hours with the documentation. I hope you can help me.
I would like to install/run the AW Rust server including the AW Web UI.
So I cloned the AW Rust server repository recursively (so that the aw-webui module is also cloned) and then built the whole thing using make build.
When I then executed the executable aw-server in the target/release folder, the server was also started successfully – but nothing ran on port 5600 (not even an API).
The log shows me that the server is running on port 5600, but that the webassets seem to be missing:
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_server]: Using DB at path "/root/.local/share/activitywatch/aw-server-rust/sqlite.db"
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_server]: Using aw-webui assets at path None
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_server::endpoints]: Starting aw-server-rust at 127.0.0.1:5600
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][WARN][rocket::launch]: Rocket has launched from http://127.0.0.1:5600
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_datastore::datastore]: Upgrading database to v2, adding data field to buckets
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_datastore::datastore]: Upgrading database to v3, replacing the broken data field for buckets
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_datastore::datastore]: Upgrading database to v4, adding table for key-value storage
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_datastore::legacy_import::import]: Did not find an old database, skipping legacy import
[2025-05-12 05:26:39][INFO][aw_datastore::datastore]: Successfully imported legacy database
Even if I use the --webassets option to specify the path to the built assets (dist/ folder inside aw-webui) as an absolute path, nothing happens. Nothing is accessible – not even an error appears, and no request to port 5600 is being blocked (it’s not a firewall issue).
But at least the log then says:
Using aw-webui assets at path Some("my path")
What am I doing wrong here?
Is the Rust server maybe not yet fully compatible with the Web UI or the API?
The documentation only mentions that the Swagger API docs are still missing.
I also tried building and running everything in a Docker container, to rule out system-level issues. The result was the same.
This is my Dockerfile:
FROM rust:1.86-slim-bookworm
ENV VERSION=0.13.1
WORKDIR /app
RUN apt-get update -qq -y
RUN apt-get install -qq -y --no-install-recommends \
git \
make \
ca-certificates \
nodejs \
npm
RUN git clone --recursive https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-server-rust.git
WORKDIR /app/aw-server-rust
RUN make build
EXPOSE 5600
CMD ["./target/release/aw-server"]
Thank you for your help in advance!