Fred

MDN's next fr(ont)e(n)d.

Getting started

1. Copy .env-dist to .env and update
2. Install dependencies npm install
3. In one terminal window, start the backend: node --env-file=.env --run rari -- serve
4. In another terminal window, start the frontend:

• Run local dev server npm run dev
• Open http://localhost:3000/en-US/ to see the homepage

Note

If you already have another local server running on port 3000, fred will use the next available port (e.g. 3001).

Development principles

Typing

• We use TypeScript in JSDoc annotations for typing, so we can write and directly execute JavaScript (with no transpilation step)
• We occasionally use TypeScript files directly for writing types/interface which are too complex to easily write in JSDoc
• Eventually we'll have a fully typed codebase, with no errors: while we're in active development we can ignore errors in the interest of development speed/pragmatism:
  • If we do so, we should use // @ts-expect-error so we get an error when we fix the error and don't leave unnecessary // @ts-ignore comments lying around. While we're in active development these can lack a comment, but eventually we'll require an explanatory comment on each.