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Contributing to Boa

Boa welcomes contribution from everyone. Here are the guidelines if you are thinking of helping out:

Contributions​

Contributions to Boa or its dependencies should be made in the form of GitHub pull requests. Each pull request will be reviewed by a core contributor (someone with permission to land patches) and either landed in the main tree or given feedback for changes that would be required. All contributions should follow this format.

Should you wish to work on an issue, please claim it first by commenting on the GitHub issue that you want to work on it. This is to prevent duplicated efforts from contributors on the same issue.

Head over to issues and check for "good first issue" labels to find good tasks to start with. If you come across words or jargon that do not make sense, please ask!

If you don't already have Rust installed rustup is the recommended tool to use. It will install Rust and allow you to switch between nightly, stable and beta. You can also install additional components. In Linux, you can run:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Then simply clone this project and cargo build.

Running the compiler​

You can execute a Boa console by running cargo run, and you can compile a list of JavaScript files by running cargo run -- file1.js file2.js and so on.

Web Assembly​

If you want to develop on the web assembly side you can run yarn serve and then go to http://localhost:8080.

Setup​

VSCode Plugins​

Either the Rust (RLS) or the Rust Analyzer extensions are preferred. RLS is easier to set up but some of the development is moving towards Rust Analyzer. Both of these plugins will help you with your Rust Development

Tasks​

Boa has some pre-defined tasks in ".vscode/tasks.json"

  • Build - shift+cmd/ctrl+b should build and run cargo. You should be able to make changes and run this task.
  • Test - (there is no shortcut, you'll need to make one) - Runs Cargo Test. I personally set a shortcut of shift+cmd+option+T (or shift+ctrl+alt+T)

If you don't want to install everything on your machine, you can use the Dockerfile. Start VSCode in container mode (you may need the docker container plugin) and use the Dockerfile.

Communication​

We have a Discord server, feel free to ask questions here