CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

Project setup

You're going to need git to get the project, and node and yarn to install dependencies and run scripts.

!!! IMPORTANT !!! yarn is strongly recommended

1. Fork and clone the repo
2. Run yarn in the repo directory to install dependencies (May take a while for first fresh install).
3. Create a branch for your PR

Tip: Keep your master branch pointing at the original repository and make pull requests from branches on your fork. To do this, run:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/sambegin/Firesteer.git
git fetch upstream
git branch --set-upstream-to=upstream/master master

This will add the original repository as a "remote" called "upstream," Then fetch the git information from that remote, then set your local master branch to use the upstream master branch whenever you run git pull. Then you can make all of your pull request branches based on this master branch. Whenever you want to update your version of master, do a regular git pull.

Run

Start the app in the dev environment. This starts the renderer process in hot-module-replacement mode and starts a webpack dev server that sends hot updates to the renderer process:

$ yarn run dev

Alternatively, you can run the renderer and main processes separately. This way, you can restart one process without waiting for the other. Run these two commands simultaneously in different console tabs:

$ yarn run start-renderer-dev
$ yarn run start-main-dev

Packaging

To package apps for the local platform:

$ yarn run package

To package apps for all platforms:

First, refer to Multi Platform Build for dependencies.

Then,

$ yarn run package-all

To package apps with options:

$ yarn run package -- --[option]

To run End-to-End Test

$ yarn run build
$ yarn run test-e2e

💡 You can debug your production build with devtools by simply setting the DEBUG_PROD env variable:

DEBUG_PROD=true npm run package

How to add modules to the project

You will need to add other modules to this boilerplate, depending on the requirements of your project. For example, you may want to add node-postgres to communicate with PostgreSQL database, or material-ui to reuse react UI components.

⚠️ Please read the following section before installing any dependencies ⚠️

Module Structure

This boilerplate uses a two package.json structure. This means, you will have two package.json files.

1. ./package.json in the root of your project
2. ./app/package.json inside app folder

Which package.json file to use

Rule of thumb is: all modules go into ./package.json except native modules. Native modules go into ./app/package.json.

1. If the module is native to a platform (like firebase-admin) or otherwise should be included with the published package (i.e. bcrypt, openbci), it should be listed under dependencies in ./app/package.json.
2. If a module is imported by another module, include it in dependencies in ./package.json. See this ESLint rule. Examples of such modules are material-ui, redux-form, and moment.
3. Otherwise, modules used for building, testing and debugging should be included in devDependencies in ./package.json.

Further Readings

See the wiki page, Module Structure — Two package.json Structure to understand what is native module, the rationale behind two package.json structure and more.

For an example app that uses this boilerplate and packages native dependencies, see erb-sqlite-example.

Dispatching redux actions from main process

See #118 and #108