Working with Kafka without Docker

If Docker is not available, the usual make dev-up workflow cannot start Kafka. Instead run a local broker manually.

The broker listens on localhost:9092. Check kafka.log for startup progress.

Verifying Connectivity

• Test with the pipeline tool:

  cd pipeline/ingest
  go run . test-kafka
  

• Or list topics directly:

  $KAFKA_DIR/bin/kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --list