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Contributing to Void

HOW_TO_CONTRIBUTE.md

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Contributing to Void

Welcome! šŸ‘‹

This is the official guide on how to contribute to Void. We want to make it as easy as possible to contribute, so if you have any questions or comments, reach out via email or discord!

There are a few ways to contribute:

  • šŸ’« Complete items on the Roadmap.
  • šŸ’” Make suggestions in our Discord.
  • šŸŖ“ Start new Issues - see Issues.

Codebase Guide

We highly recommend reading this guide that we put together on Void's sourcecode if you'd like to add new features.

The repo is not as intimidating as it first seems if you read the guide!

Most of Void's code lives in the folder src/vs/workbench/contrib/void/.

Editing Void's Code

If you're making changes to Void's code as a contributor, you'll want to run a local version of Void to make sure your changes worked. Developer mode lets you do this. Here's how to use it.

a. Mac - Prerequisites

If you're using a Mac, you need Python and XCode. You probably have these by default.

b. Windows - Prerequisites

If you're using a Windows computer, first get Visual Studio 2022 (recommended) or VS Build Tools (not recommended). If you already have both, you might need to run the next few steps on both of them.

Go to the "Workloads" tab and select:

  • Desktop development with C++
  • Node.js build tools

Go to the "Individual Components" tab and select:

  • MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 Spectre-mitigated libs (Latest)
  • C++ ATL for latest build tools with Spectre Mitigations
  • C++ MFC for latest build tools with Spectre Mitigations

Finally, click Install.

c. Linux - Prerequisites

First, run npm install -g node-gyp. Then:

  • Debian (Ubuntu, etc): sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libsecret-1-dev libkrb5-dev python-is-python3.
  • Red Hat (Fedora, etc): sudo dnf install @development-tools gcc gcc-c++ make libsecret-devel krb5-devel libX11-devel libxkbfile-devel.
  • SUSE (openSUSE, etc): sudo zypper install patterns-devel-C-C++-devel_C_C++ krb5-devel libsecret-devel libxkbfile-devel libX11-devel.
  • Others: see How to Contribute.

Developer Mode Instructions

Here's how to start changing Void's code. These steps cover everything from cloning Void, to opening a Developer Mode window where you can play around with your updates.

  1. git clone https://github.com/voideditor/void to clone the repo.
  2. npm install to install all dependencies.
  3. Open Void or VSCode, and initialize Developer Mode (this can take ~5 min to finish, it's done when 2 of the 3 spinners turn to check marks):
    • Windows: Press <kbd>Ctrl+Shift+B</kbd>.
    • Mac: Press <kbd>Cmd+Shift+B</kbd>.
    • Linux: Press <kbd>Ctrl+Shift+B</kbd>.
  4. Open the Void Developer Mode window:
    • Windows: ./scripts/code.bat.
    • Mac: ./scripts/code.sh.
    • Linux: ./scripts/code.sh.
  5. You're good to start editing Void's code!
    • You won't see your changes unless you press <kbd>Ctrl+R</kbd> (<kbd>Cmd+R</kbd>) inside the new window to reload. Alternatively, press <kbd>Ctrl+Shift+P</kbd> and Reload Window.
    • You might want to add the flags --user-data-dir ./.tmp/user-data --extensions-dir ./.tmp/extensions to the command in step 4, which lets you reset any IDE changes you made by deleting the .tmp folder.
    • You can kill any of the build scripts by pressing Ctrl+D in its terminal. If you press Ctrl+C the script will close but will keep running in the background.

If you get any errors, scroll down for common fixes.

Common Fixes

  • Make sure you followed the prerequisite steps above.
  • Make sure you have Node version 20.18.2 (the version in .nvmrc).
    • You can do this without changing your global Node version using nvm: run nvm install, followed by nvm use to install the version in .nvmrc locally.
  • Make sure the path to your Void folder does not have any spaces in it.
  • If you get "TypeError: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module", make sure all imports end with .js.
  • If you get an error with React, try running NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=8192" npm run buildreact.
  • If you see missing styles, wait a few seconds and then reload.
  • If you get errors like npm error libtool: error: unrecognised option: '-static', when running ./scripts/code.sh, make sure you have GNU libtool instead of BSD libtool (BSD is the default in macos)
  • If you get errors like The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly when running ./scripts/code.sh, run sudo chown root:root .build/electron/chrome-sandbox && sudo chmod 4755 .build/electron/chrome-sandbox and then run ./scripts/code.sh again.
  • If you have any other questions, feel free to submit an issue. You can also refer to VSCode's complete How to Contribute page.

Building Void from Terminal

To build Void from the terminal instead of from inside VSCode, follow the steps above, but instead of pressing <kbd>Cmd+Shift+B</kbd>, run npm run watch. The build is done when you see something like this:

[watch-extensions] [00:37:39] Finished compilation extensions with 0 errors after 19303 ms
[watch-client    ] [00:38:06] Finished compilation with 0 errors after 46248 ms
[watch-client    ] [00:38:07] Starting compilation...
[watch-client    ] [00:38:07] Finished compilation with 0 errors after 5 ms

Distributing

Void's maintainers distribute Void on our website and in releases. Our build pipeline is a fork of VSCodium, and it works by running GitHub Actions which create the downloadables. The build repo with more instructions lives here.

If you want to completely control Void's build pipeline for your own internal usage, which comes with a lot of time cost (and is typically not recommended), see our void-builder repo which builds Void and contains a few important notes about auto-updating and rebasing.

Building a Local Executible

We don't usually recommend building a local executible of Void - typically you should follow the steps above to distribute a complete executible with the advantages of VSCodium baked-in, or you should just use Developer Mode to run Void locally which is much faster. If you're certain this is what you want, see details below.

<details> <summary> Building Locally (not recommended)</summary> If you're certain you want to build a local executible of Void, follow these steps. It can take ~25 minutes.

Make sure you've already entered Developer Mode with Void first, then run one of the following commands. This will create a folder named VSCode-darwin-arm64 or similar outside of the void/ repo (see below).

Mac
  • npm run gulp vscode-darwin-arm64 - most common (Apple Silicon)
  • npm run gulp vscode-darwin-x64 (Intel)
Windows
  • npm run gulp vscode-win32-x64 - most common
  • npm run gulp vscode-win32-arm64
Linux
  • npm run gulp vscode-linux-x64 - most common
  • npm run gulp vscode-linux-arm64
Local Executible Output

The local executible will be located in a folder outside of void/:

bash
workspace/
ā”œā”€ā”€ void/   # Your Void fork
ā””ā”€ā”€ VSCode-darwin-arm64/ # Generated output
</details>

Pull Request Guidelines

  • Please submit a pull request once you've made a change.
  • No need to submit an Issue unless you're creating a new feature that might involve multiple PRs.
  • Please don't use AI to write your PR šŸ™‚