FreeNAS 10 is a green-field project, and we're looking for contributors who are ready to take nothing and turn it into something. We provide a dev environment that makes iterating incredibly fast, and provides tools like sourcemaps and live-updating to make debugging as easy as possible.
FreeNAS 10 development is currently supported on FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and some Linux distributions. Windows users might be able to get it working, but it's not and will not be an officially supported platform for development.
If you already have node.js installed and the repo checked out, great! Skip to "Using the FreeNAS 10 Development Environment" below.
Otherwise, to begin developing for the FreeNAS 10 GUI on one of these platforms, install node.js.
For Mac OS X, installing the package from nodejs.org should suffice.
For FreeBSD, run sudo pkg install npm.
To make sure you have all the necessary global dev dependencies for developing the FreeNAS 10 GUI, run:
sudo npm install -g gulp forever jshint jscs esprima-fb@15001.1.0-dev-harmony-fb
npm install
from the root of where you cloned the repo first.
Once you're ready, run gulp --connect FreeNASIPorHostname and connect to
localhost:9999.
Once the app is running, it will monitor your source files and automatically rebuild and restart the GUI every time a file changes.
Upcoming: Docs walking through the process of adding a top level feature.
FreeNAS 10 is still incredibly early in development. We're looking for contributors who can provide a concrete mockup for a given feature, work with us to refine the mockup, and then implement it independently.
Our preferred way to see a mockup is with Balsamiq Mockups. If you don't have commit access, simply open an issue with your proposed mockup attached (Balsamiq also exports to PNG, if needed). A template project and any existing mockups may be found in the mockups directory in the source. Balsamiq offers a 30-day free trial. If you don't have access to Balsamiq, we also accept cellphone pictures of whiteboards and cocktail napkins. All we need is something clear enough to review.
The FreeNAS team at iXsystems has regular meetings to assess and provide feedback on mockups. Once a mockup is approved (probably a pretty informal process after the first look) the contributor should be prepared to implement that feature according to that mockup without substantial further feedback. This should be done in a feature branch for those with commit access and in a fork otherwise.
Once a feature is ready, send a pull request or merge your changes. Don't send a pull request or merge your changes until you're absolutely sure your feature is ready, because it will be summarily rejected if it's broken, substantially different from the mockup, or negatively impacts any other part of the GUI.
Has something gone horribly wrong with your node and npm environment? For your convenience, here's the command some members of our team have used to nuke everything from orbit. This command is for Mac OS X:
cd source-directory-for-gui (where this file you're reading is)
sudo ./node-nuker-osx.sh
Once that's done, start fresh! We recommend against using MacPorts or Homebrew for your Node installation on OS X.