Backend interview smoke test

A five-minute check that your machine can run the interview project. Run it the day before; if it passes, the project's make up will work first time.

git clone <this repo> && cd backend-interview-smoke-test
make

You should end with ALL GOOD. The first run downloads about 2 GB of Docker images; a second run takes well under a minute. Nothing is left running, and while it runs the containers listen on 127.0.0.1 only.

Supported: macOS, Linux, and Windows through WSL2. The scripts need bash and make, so native Windows without WSL is not supported.

What you need installed

Tool	Why	Check
Docker with Compose v2	everything in the project runs in containers	docker compose version prints v2.x
make	the project is driven by a Makefile	make --version
git	to clone	git --version

Docker Desktop, OrbStack, Rancher Desktop, or Docker Engine plus the compose plugin all work. That is the whole list: the project itself has no other host requirements. Whatever language and tooling you use to build your own service is up to you.

What make verifies

Step	Checks
Host prerequisites	docker running, Compose v2, make, git, free disk, and that ports 8545, 29092, 6379, 8090 are free
Images	pulls and builds the same base images the project uses, all pinned to exact versions, so they are cached for interview day
Rootchain	a local anvil starts natively and mines blocks
Solidity toolchain	the amd64 Foundry image compiles and tests a solc 0.8.35 contract (this runs under emulation on Apple Silicon, and is the step most likely to surprise)
Go build	a multi-stage docker build with the Go module proxy reachable
Kafka	a single-node KRaft broker accepts a single-partition topic and returns three messages in order
Redis	answers PING
From your machine	the published ports answer on localhost, the way your service will connect

If something fails

• Docker daemon not reachable: start Docker Desktop / OrbStack and re-run.
• Compose v1 or missing: install the docker compose plugin (Docker Desktop includes it; on Linux install docker-compose-plugin).
• Port in use: copy .env.example to .env and change the port. The interview project reads the same variables, so you only fix this once.
• forge step fails on version not found in artifacts for this platform: your Docker is not running the amd64 image under emulation. On Apple Silicon, enable Rosetta for x86/amd64 emulation in Docker Desktop settings (OrbStack has it on by default).
• Slow or failing downloads: the test reaches these hosts, all over HTTPS. Corporate proxies or VPNs sometimes block one of them; try another network.
  • ghcr.io (Foundry image)
  • docker.io (Kafka, Redis, Go, and Alpine images)
  • proxy.golang.org and sum.golang.org (Go modules, during the image build)
  • binaries.soliditylang.org (solc 0.8.35, fetched by forge)
  • soldeer-revisions.s3.amazonaws.com (the forge-std library, checksum-pinned in contracts/soldeer.lock)

make check runs only the host checks. make up, make verify, and make down run the stages separately if you want to poke at the stack.