peertube-plugin-livechat/support/documentation/content/contributing/develop/_index.en.md

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title="Develop"
description="Develop"
weight=40
chapter=false
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Always talk about features you want to develop by creating/finding and commenting the issue tackling your problem
before you start working on it, and inform the community that you begin coding by claiming the issue.

Pull Request must be done on the `main` branch.

{{% notice note %}}
Until march 2023, contribution were made on the `develop` branch. This procedure is now deprecated.
{{% /notice %}}

Prerequisite for building this plugin:

- you must have `npm` installed
- you must have python venv installed (`python3-venv` package on Debian for example)

To clone the repository:

```bash
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/JohnXLivingston/peertube-plugin-livechat.git
# Be sure to checkout the main branch
git checkout main
# Initialize the submodules. This command must be run again if any submodules' version changes.
git submodule update --init --recursive

# Install NPM dependencies and build the module for the first time:
npm install

# Build the plugin after a modification:
npm run build

# If you have a fork from the repository, add it as remote (example):
git remote add me git@github.com:MY_GITHUB_ACCOUNT/peertube-plugin-livechat.git

# Create a local branch for you developments, and checkout it (example):
git checkout my_development # Note: if an issue is associated, use fix_1234 as your branch name (where 1234 is the issue's number)
# To propose your modifications, push your branch to your repository (example):
git push --set-upstream me my_development
# Then go to your github repository with your web browser to propose the Pull Request (see additional instructions below)
```

Once you are ready to show your code to ask for feedback, submit a *draft* Pull Request.
Once you are ready for a code review before merge, submit a Pull Request. In any case, please
link your PR to the issues it solves by using the GitHub syntax: "fixes #issue_number".

The front-end code is in the `client` folder, the back-end code in `server`. There are some shared code in `shared` folder.

For general instructions (developping plugins, building, installation, ...), please refer to the [Peertube documentation](https://docs.joinpeertube.org/contribute-plugins?id=write-a-plugintheme).

You can build the plugin with extra debug features simply by using:

```bash
NODE_ENV=dev npm run build
```

## ESBuild vs Typescript

This plugin uses ESBuild for frontend code generation, as the official `peertube-plugin-quickstart` plugin.
ESBuild can handle Typescript, but does not check types
(see [ESBuild documentation](https://esbuild.github.io/content-types/#typescript)).
That's why we first compile Typescript with the `-noEmit` option, just to check types (`check:client:ts` in package.json file).
Then, if everything is okay, we run ESBuild to generate the compiled javascript.

## Debug Mode

There is a debug mode for this plugin, that shorten some delay.
For example, some log files will rotate every two minutes, instead of once per day.
This permit to test more easily certain actions, for which it could normally take hours or days to wait.

To enable this mode, you juste have to create the
`/var/www/peertube/storage/plugins/data/peertube-plugin-livechat/debug_mode` file
(replacing `/var/www/peertube/storage/` by the correct path on your installation).

The simple existence of this file is sufficient to trigger the debug mode.
To make sure it's taken into account, you can restart your Peertube instance.

## Quick dev environment using Docker

There is a tutorial, in french, on the
[le Peertube forum](https://framacolibri.org/t/tutoriel-creer-un-environnement-de-developpement-de-plugin-peertube-rapidement-en-utilisant-docker-et-qui-permet-de-tester-la-federation/17631)
that explains how to quickly build a dev env using Docker.