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mirror of https://github.com/Llewellynvdm/nativefier.git synced 2024-11-16 10:05:09 +00:00
nativefier/docs/development.md
Ronan Jouchet c9ee6667d4
Revamp and move to TypeScript (#898)
## Breaking changes

- Require **Node >= 8.10.0 and npm 5.6.0**
- Move to **Electron 8.1.1**.
- That's it. Lots of care went into breaking CLI & programmatic behavior
  as little as possible. **Please report regressions**.
- Known issue: build may fail behind a proxy. Get in touch if you use one:
  https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier/issues/907#issuecomment-596144768

## Changes summary

Nativefier didn't get much love recently, to the point that it's
becoming hard to run on recent Node, due to old dependencies.
Also, some past practices now seem weird, as better expressible
by modern JS/TS, discouraging contributions including mine.

Addressing this, and one thing leading to another, came a
bigger-than-expected revamp, aiming at making Nativefier more
**lean, stable, future-proof, user-friendly and dev-friendly**,
while **not changing the CLI/programmatic interfaces**. Highlights:

- **Require Node>=8**, as imposed by many of our dependencies. Node 8
  is twice LTS, and easily available even in conservative Linux distros.
  No reason not to demand it.
- **Default to Electron 8**.
- **Bump** all dependencies to latest version, including electron-packager.
- **Move to TS**. TS is great. As of today, I see no reason not to use it,
  and fight interface bugs at runtime rather than at compile time.
  With that, get rid of everything Babel/Webpack.
- **Move away from Gulp**. Gulp's selling point is perf via streaming,
  but for small builds like Nativefier, npm tasks are plenty good
  and less dependency bloat. Gulp was the driver for this PR: broken
  on Node 12, and I didn't feel like just upgrading and keeping it.
- Add tons of **verbose logs** everywhere it makes sense, to have a
  fine & clear trace of the program flow. This will be helpful to
  debug user-reported issues, and already helped me fix a few bugs.
    - With better simple logging, get rid of the quirky and buggy
      progress bar based on package `progress`. Nice logging (minimal
      by default, the verbose logging mentioned above is only used
      when passing `--verbose`) is better and one less dependency.
- **Dump `async` package**, a relic from old callback-hell early Node.
  Also dump a few other micro-packages unnecessary now.
- A first pass of code **cleanup** thanks to modern JS/TS features:
  fixes, simplifications, jsdoc type annotations to types, etc.
- **Remove GitHub integrations Hound & CodeClimate**, which are more
  exotic than good'ol'linters, and whose signal-to-noise ratio is too low.
- Quality: **Add tests** and add **Windows + macOS CI builds**.
  Also, add a **manual test script**, helping to quickly verify the
  hard-to-programatically-test stuff before releases, and limit regressions.
- **Fix a very small number of existing bugs**. The goal of this PR was
  *not* to fix bugs, but to get Nativefier in better shape to do so.
  Bugfixes will come later. Still, these got addressed:
  - Add common `Alt`+`Left`/`Right` for previous/next navigation.
  - Improve #379: fix zoom with `Ctrl` + numpad `+`/`-`
  - Fix pinch-to-zoom (see https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier/issues/379#issuecomment-598612128 )
2020-03-15 16:50:01 -04:00

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Markdown

# Development Guide
## Setup
First, clone the project
```bash
git clone https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier.git
cd nativefier
```
Install dependencies:
```bash
npm install
```
Build nativefier:
```bash
npm run build
```
Set up a symbolic link so that running `nativefier` calls your dev version with your changes:
```bash
npm link
which nativefier
# -> Should return a path, e.g. /home/youruser/.node_modules/lib/node_modules/nativefier
# If not, be sure your `npm_config_prefix` env var is set and in your `PATH`
```
After doing so, you can run Nativefier with your test parameters:
```bash
nativefier --your-awesome-new-flag 'https://your-test-site.com'
```
Then run your nativefier app *through the command line too* (to see logs & errors):
```bash
# Under Linux
./your-test-site-linux-x64/your-test-site
# Under Windows
your-test-site-win32-x64/your-test-site.exe
# Under macOS
open -a YourTestSite.app
```
## Linting & formatting
Nativefier uses [Prettier](https://prettier.io/), which will shout at you for
not formatting code exactly like it expects. This guarantees a homogenous style,
but is painful to do manually. Do yourself a favor and install a
[Prettier plugin for your editor](https://prettier.io/docs/en/editors.html).
## Tests
- To run all tests, `npm t`
- To run only unit tests, `npm run test:unit`
- To run only integration tests, `npm run test:integration`
- Logging is suppressed by default in tests, to avoid polluting Jest output.
To get debug logs, `npm run test:withlog` or set the `LOGLEVEL` env. var.
- For a good live experience, open two terminal panes/tabs running code/tests watchers:
2. Run a TSC watcher: `npm run build:watch`
3. Run a Jest unit tests watcher: `npm run test:watch`