Today I checked out the current master from this repository (commit f73313 to be exact), and in the resulting directory executed npm i and then ./bin/ethercalc. Pointing my browser at http://localhost:8000, all seems well: the start page loads fine, and the create spreadsheet button works fine and produces apparently working spreadsheets.

If I then make some trivial change to src/main.ls (changing _start to _mystart, say), it of course has no effect on the running ethercalc server, as that's controlled by the .js files generated from the LiveScript. So then if one executes make in the main ethercalc directory (first it fails due to an outdated installation of uglify-js, which can easily be corrected with npm install uglify-js) it generates new .js files. Restarting the ethercalc server, one observes that the change has been put into effect (the server now responds to http://localhost:8000/_mystart, which it did not before) but sadly that now any attempt to open a new or existing spreadsheet loops infinitely with a "TypeError: SocialCalc.Sheet is undefined" JavaScript exception.

Perhaps there is some bug in the Makefile? Or perhaps "make" is no longer the recommended way to rebuild from modified sources? If the latter, and if someone could explain what the best way to rebuild is, I'd be happy to submit a PR updating the installation documentation.

Note this issue may well be a duplicate of #175, but since I think this report encapsulates the difficulty more narrowly, and it's been five years anyway, I decided go ahead and post this separately. Happy to close in favor of continuing any efforts on this in #175 if that's preferred. Thank you very much for your time.