Contributing to Living Dictionaries

Set Up Dev Environment

• Install the recommended VSCode extensions.
• Install pnpm globaly using npm install -g pnpm if you don't have it yet.
• Then install dependencies with pnpm i and run pnpm dev. Each command will start up a Vite dev server which will give you a link to open on localhost. Changes will hot reload almost instantly (consider using auto-save if you want to). ...notes outdated and incomplete

*Note that on localhost you will not see the live (prod) site's data, but rather the data from the dev database, which allows us to develop and make changes freely without worrying about deleting or corrupting important data.

Git methodology

We follow Github flow. Changes are made on feature branches and then pull requests are submitted to the main branch. The main branch code is automatically deployed to production. Be sure to read through the GitHub flow article as it gives important information on how often to commit.

Example workflow using VS Code's GUI for Git

1. git clone https://github.com/<repo_url> - You're now on the main branch.
2. Checkout a new branch using the Git Checkout button and give the branch a descriptive name using kebab-case (my-feature-branch for example).
3. Make your code changes. You can see them being tracked in the Source Control tab (Ctrl+Shift+G to navigate to it).
4. Once you have a set of changes that go together (i.e. an atomic commit), enter a descriptive message regarding your changes and hit "Ctrl+Enter". You may continue to make changes and commits, or move on to the next step if you are ready to push your changes to the server. *If you only want to commit specific files, you can individually "Stage" these by clicking the + symbol by each desired file before entering your commit message and pressing "Ctrl+Enter" to commit.
5. Click the Synchronize Changes button (lower left corner) and your changes will be pushed to the server.
6. Open the repository in GitHub to see your changes and create a pull request (PR). Once created, teammates can comment on the code and changes can be merged into the main branch if approved. Now that you are done working on this feature, you can switch back to the main and start the process all over.

Example workflow using Git Bash

1. git clone https://github.com/<repo_url> - You're now on the main branch.
2. git checkout -b my-feature-branch (Note the branch is kebab-case). Make the branch name descriptive.
3. Make a few changes. Run git diff to see your changes.
4. Once you have a set of changes that go together (i.e. an atomic commit), run git add . If you just want to commit a single file, run git add readme.md for example.
5. git commit -m "Enter your message here". If you want to add more than a 1 line message, run git commit. A text editor will open, and you can add your commit message there. You can run git status at any point if you want to see what files have been changed and which are committed and ready to be pushed.
6. git push origin my-feature-branch - Push your changes to the server. You'll see a link to create a PR in the command line. Once you create the PR, teammates can comment on code

Catch up branch with changes made to the main branch

Sometimes a feature branch will take awhile to complete. In the meantime the main branch has moved ahead, possibly with some bug fixes or features that you would like incorporated into your feature branch. If this happens, make sure that both your feature branch and main branches on your local machine are up to date from the repo, then:

• checkout the main branch
• sync w/ Github (Git pull or use the VSCode sync button)
• checkout your feature branch and run git merge main to pull in updates from the main branch.