To develop Homebridge plugins you must have Node.js 12 or later installed, and a modern code editor such as VS Code. This plugin uses TypeScript to make development easier and comes with pre-configured settings for VS Code and ESLint. If you are using VS Code install these extensions:
Using a terminal, navigate to the project folder and run this command to install the development dependencies:
npm install
TypeScript needs to be compiled into JavaScript before it can run. The following command will
compile the contents of your src
directory and put the resulting code into the dist
folder.
npm run build
Run this command so your global install of Homebridge can discover the plugin in your development environment:
npm link
You can now start Homebridge, use the -D
flag so you can see debug log messages from the plugin:
homebridge -D
If you want to have your code compile automatically as you make changes, and restart Homebridge automatically between changes you can run:
npm run watch
This will launch an instance of Homebridge in debug mode which will restart every time you make a
change to the source code. It will load the config stored in the default location under
~/.homebridge
. You may need to stop other running instances of Homebridge while using this command
to prevent conflicts. You can adjust the Homebridge startup command in the
nodemon.json
file.
Given a version number MAJOR
.MINOR
.PATCH
, such as 1.4.3
, increment the:
- MAJOR version when you make breaking changes to the plugin,
- MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner, and
- PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.
You can use the npm version
command to help you with this:
# major update / breaking changes
npm version major
# minor update / new features
npm version minor
# patch / bugfixes
npm version patch
You can publish beta versions of this plugin for other users to test before you release it to everyone.
# create a new pre-release version (eg. 2.1.0-beta.1)
npm version prepatch --preid beta
# publsh to @beta
npm publish --tag=beta
Users can then install the beta version by appending @beta
to the install command, for example:
sudo npm install -g homebridge-genie-aladdin-connect@beta