nx/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Nx

We would love for you to contribute to Nx! Read this document to see how to do it.

How to Get Started Video

Watch this 5-minute video:

Got a Question?

We are trying to keep GitHub issues for bug reports and feature requests. Using the nrwl tag on Stack Overflow is a much better place to ask general questions about how to use Nx.

Found an Issue?

If you find a bug in the source code or a mistake in the documentation, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. Even better, you can submit a Pull Request with a fix.

Project Structure

Source code and documentation are included in the top-level folders listed below.

• docs - Markdown and configuration files for documentation including tutorials, guides for each supported platform, and API docs.
• e2e - E2E tests.
• packages - Source code for Nx packages such as Angular, React, Web, NestJS, Next and others including generators and executors (or builders).
• scripts - Miscellaneous scripts for project tasks such as building documentation, testing, and code formatting.
• tmp - Folder used by e2e tests. If you are a WebStorm user, make sure to mark this folder as excluded.

Building the Project

After cloning the project to your machine, to install the dependencies, run:

yarn

To build all the packages, run:

yarn build

Publishing to a local registry

To test if your changes will actually work once the changes are published, it can be useful to publish to a local registry.

Check out this video for a live walkthrough or follow the instructions below:

# Starts the local registry. Keep this running in a separate terminal.
yarn local-registry start

# Set npm and yarn to use the local registry.
# Note: This reroutes your installs to your local registry
yarn local-registry enable

# Revert npm and yarn to use their default registries
yarn local-registry disable

To publish packages to a local registry, do the following:

• Run yarn local-registry start in Terminal 1 (keep it running)
• Run npm adduser --registry http://localhost:4873 in Terminal 2 (real credentials are not required, you just need to be logged in)
• Run yarn local-registry enable in Terminal 2
• Run yarn nx-release 999.9.9 --local in Terminal 2
• Run cd /tmp in Terminal 2
• Run npx create-nx-workspace@999.9.9 in Terminal 2

Running Unit Tests

To make sure your changes do not break any unit tests, run the following:

yarn test

For example, if you need to only run the tests for the jest package, run:

nx test jest

Running E2E Tests

To make sure your changes do not break any E2E tests, run:

yarn e2e

Running E2E tests can take some time, so it is often useful to run a single test. To run a single suite of tests, run:

yarn e2e e2e-cli

Developing on Windows

To build Nx on Windows, you need to use WSL.

• Run yarn install in WSL. Yarn will compile several dependencies. If you don't run install in WSL, they will be compiled for Windows.
• Run yarn test and other commands in WSL.

Submission Guidelines

Submitting an Issue

Before you submit an issue, please search the issue tracker. An issue for your problem may already exist and has been resolved, or the discussion might inform you of workarounds readily available.

We want to fix all the issues as soon as possible, but before fixing a bug we need to reproduce and confirm it. Having a reproducible scenario gives us wealth of important information without going back and forth with you requiring additional information, such as:

• the output of nx report
• yarn.lock or package-lock.json
• and most importantly - a use-case that fails

A minimal reproduction allows us to quickly confirm a bug (or point out coding problem) as well as confirm that we are fixing the right problem.

We will be insisting on a minimal reproduction in order to save maintainers time and ultimately be able to fix more bugs. Interestingly, from our experience, users often find coding problems themselves while preparing a minimal repository. We understand that sometimes it might be hard to extract essentials bits of code from a larger code-base but we really need to isolate the problem before we can fix it.

You can file new issues by filling out our issue form.

Submitting a PR

Please follow the following guidelines:

• Make sure unit tests pass (yarn test)
  • Target a specific project with: nx run proj:test (i.e. nx run angular:test to target packages/angular)
  • Target a specific unit test file (i.e. packages/angular/src/utils/ast-utils.spec.ts) with npx jest angular/src/utils/ast-utils or npx jest packages/angular/src/utils/ast-utils
  • For more options on running tests - check npx jest --help or visit jestjs.io
  • Debug with node --inspect-brk ./node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js build/packages/angular/src/utils/ast-utils.spec.js
• Make sure e2e tests pass (this can take a while, so you can always let CI check those) (yarn e2e)
  • Target a specific e2e test (i.e. /build/e2e/cypress.test.js) with yarn e2e cypress
  • Debug with node --inspect-brk ./node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js build/e2e/cypress.test.js
• Make sure you run yarn format
• Update documentation with yarn documentation. For documentation, check for spelling and grammatical errors.
• Update your commit message to follow the guidelines below (use yarn commit to automate compliance)
  • yarn check-commit will check to make sure your commit messages are formatted correctly

Commit Message Guidelines

The commit message should follow the following format:

type(scope): subject
BLANK LINE
body

Type

The type must be one of the following:

• chore
• feat
• fix
• cleanup
• docs

Scope

The scope must be one of the following:

• angular - anything Angular specific
• core - anything Nx core specific
• nxdev - anything related to docs infrastructure
• nextjs - anything Next specific
• nest - anything Nest specific
• node - anything Node specific
• linter - anything Linter specific
• react - anything React specific
• web - anything Web specific
• storybook - anything Storybook specific
• testing - anything testing specific (e.g., jest or cypress)
• repo - anything related to managing the repo itself
• misc - misc stuff
• devkit - devkit-related changes

Subject and Body

The subject must contain a description of the change, and the body of the message contains any additional details to provide more context about the change.

Including the issue number that the PR relates to also helps with tracking.

Example

feat(generators): add an option to generate lazy-loadable modules

`nx generate lib mylib --lazy` provisions the mylib project in tslint.json

Closes #157

Commitizen

To simplify and automate the process of committing with this format, Nx is a Commitizen friendly repository, just do git add and execute yarn commit.