Getting started developing

Setting up your development environment.

To develop the Visual Framework your will need some free software.

First you'll need to see if you have the needed tools installed.

  1. Open a command line/terminal
  2. Enter node -v
    • note: as of May 2021 we require at least Node version 12. Version 14 or newer is recommended.
  3. Enter yarn -v
  4. Enter gulp -v

If any of those steps return an error you need to install the corresponding software.

Development environment

We have a recommended development environment for new developers:

  1. Setup a GitHub.com account
  2. Install the GitHub Desktop git client
  3. For editing code, install Visual Studio Code
    We also recommended some extensions to improve you editing experience and speed:

Problems?

See the troubleshooting guide.

Developing the VF Core

You only need to clone vf-core if you wish to make a pull request to create, amend or delete core components, or modify the way Sass, JS or other assets are compiled.

Here's how:

  1. Clone vf-core
    • git clone https://github.com/visual-framework/vf-core.git
  2. Move to the directory
    • cd vf-core
  3. You probably want the develop branch (or your new feature branch)
    • git checkout develop
  4. Go into the Visual Framework main project
    • cd tools/vf-core
  5. Download all the things
    • yarn install
  6. Run a dev build and open in your browser
    • gulp vf-dev

Developing on Windows?

The Visual Framework is primarily developed on Mac and Linux environments, but it is also intended to be Windows 10 compatible.

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