Thank you for your interest in contributing to Plasmic! We appreciate all the contributions we receive, from issue reports to code changes.
If you're interested in implementing a non-trivial code change, please create an issue first, so that we can discuss the approach.
When submitting a PR for platform/
for the first time, you'll be automatically asked to agree to our Individual Contributor License Agreement, which is needed to accept your PR.
This only needs to be done once.
If you are contributing on behalf of a company, please have your company contact us to sign a Corporate Contributor License Agreement, via community@plasmic.app.
This repo contains:
- the Plasmic Studio platform itself (under the
platform/
dir) - code for all Plasmic component store packages (
@plasmicpkgs/*
) - client libraries/SDKs (
@plasmicapp/*
) - examples (under the
examples/
dir)
For hacking on code components or plasmicpkgs
, see specific additional instructions further down.
We use lerna
to help us manage dependencies among all the packages.
In general, we follow the "fork-and-pull" Git workflow.
- Fork the repo on GitHub
- Clone the project to your own machine
- Commit changes to your own branch
- Push your work back up to your fork
- Submit a Pull request so that we can review your changes
NOTE: Be sure to merge the latest from "upstream" before making a pull request!
In platform/
is the code for the Plasmic Studio platform itself.
This includes all the frontend and backend code for the design tool/visual editor,
as well as the backend code for the apps built in Plasmic.
To get started, please see the the getting started guide.
yarn
yarn lerna bootstrap # inter-links all the lerna-managed packages together
We also make use of Verdaccio to locally test packages. This just stands up a local npm registry that you can publish your test packages to.
yarn global add verdaccio
verdaccio & # Runs the verdaccio server at http://localhost:4873
You'll need to update the verdaccio config file, at ~/.config/verdaccio/config.yaml
, to instruct verdaccio to not use npmjs for our test packages:
packages:
'@plasmicapp/isomorphic-unfetch':
access: $all
publish: $authenticated
unpublish: $authenticated
proxy: npmjs
'@plasmicapp/react-ssr-prepass':
access: $all
publish: $authenticated
unpublish: $authenticated
proxy: npmjs
'@plasmicapp/*':
access: $all
publish: $all
unpublish: $all
'@plasmicpkgs/data-table':
access: $all
publish: $authenticated
unpublish: $authenticated
proxy: npmjs
'@plasmicpkgs/plasmic-shopify':
access: $all
publish: $authenticated
unpublish: $authenticated
proxy: npmjs
'@plasmicpkgs/*':
access: $all
publish: $all
unpublish: $all
Then kill and restart the verdaccio server:
verdaccio &
Finally, in order to publish, you may be required to have a user login. Create this one-time in your Verdaccio--it doesn't matter what user/password/email you input:
npm --registry=http://localhost:4873 adduser
For standalone applications like the CLI, you can do this:
cd packages/cli/
# Step 1. (One-time)
# Ensure dependencies are built.
npx nx build @plasmicapp/cli
# Step 2. (Repeat)
# Hackety hack, then you can directly run the source with esbuild-register.
node -r esbuild-register src/index.ts -h
If you need the package installed in another npm project to test it, like say a Next.js project, you'll need to publish to your local verdaccio. This is the case for most packages in this repo, which are libraries meant to be used elsewhere.
# Step 1.
# Make some changes! Let's say, to @plasmicapp/host.
# vim packages/host/src/registerComponent.ts
# Step 2.
# Publish a specific package to verdaccio.
# This unpublishes YOURPKG and its dependencies from your verdaccio, re-builds them, and publishes them to your local
# verdaccio.
# Note that this does not bump versions!
# We are using nx under the hood, so if your dependencies haven't changed, this should be fast.
# In this example, even though we edited @plasmicapp/host, we can just think about publishing the "root" package(s) we're ultimately installing into the test app, in this case @plasmicapp/loader-nextjs.
yarn local-publish @plasmicapp/loader-nextjs &&
# Or publish all packages to verdaccio. This will take longer.
# yarn local-publish
# Step 3.
# Go to the package you're testing, e.g. test-host-app.
# You can quickly create a test target app with `npx create-plasmic-app`.
cd ~/test-host-app &&
# Step 4.
# Simply blow away existing package manager state, to ensure we're getting your locally published versions of packages.
# This is the simplest approach if this is a throwaway test app where you don't need to maintain version lock state.
rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json yarn.lock &&
# Or, to be more surgical: you can delete anything that pulls in any @plasmicapp/@plasmicpkgs packages.
# In this case, we want to remove anything that depends on the @plasmicapp/host package we updated.
# npm un @plasmicapp/loader-nextjs @plasmicpkgs/plasmic-rich-components
# Step 5.
# Delete any framework-specific caches, such as these for Next.js and Gatsby.
# Frameworks might cache node_modules packages in ways that won't pick up your changes, depending on how you carried out the prior steps.
rm -rf .next/ .cache/ &&
# Step 6.
# (Re-)install the necessary packages, from your local verdaccio.
# These will pull in the changes you made to @plasmicapp/host.
# Note: this proxies to npmjs.org for packages that aren't published locally to verdaccio.
npm i @plasmicapp/loader-nextjs @plasmicpkgs/plasmic-rich-components --registry=http://localhost:4873
Check that the versions in your package.json are also not holding back any plasmicpkgs and plasmicapp versions!
In general, you probably want all @plasmicapp/@plasmicpkgs packages to be installed from your local verdaccio, rather than having some installed from npmjs.org and others installed from local, since you want to prevent mismatched and duplicate package versions.
For a few packages like react-ssr-prepass, these are not currently integrated into the NX workspace system. This is because Lerna doesn't work with git submodules. You can publish these as individual packages with, for instance:
cd plasmicpkgs/SOMETHING
yarn install # Not included in the workspace install
yarn publish --registry=http://localhost:4873
# Or with more options: yarn publish --canary --yes --include-merged-tags --no-git-tag-version --no-push --registry=http://localhost:4873 --force-publish
The above general contribution instructions also apply to plasmicpkgs, so read that if you haven't done so.
Before starting, we recommend reading our docs for Code Components:
- [Docs on code components][code component docs]
Ignore this if you are just updating an existing package.
To create a new plasmicpkg, the easiest approach is to clone one of the existing packages (like react-slick) and fix up the names in package.json and README. Then author your registration code in src. Please use yarn
for package management.
The directory name should be the same name as the main package you'll be using to import the React components. Your package must be named @plasmicpkgs/{package-name}
and start with version 1.0.0.
@plasmicpkgs/*
packages should depend on @plasmicapp/*
packages as both peer dependencies and dev dependencies.
You should always use a permissive range in peerDependencies, so that users can install your @plasmicpkgs/*
package with whatever their current versions are of @plasmicapp/*
packages.
Dev dependencies should specify the most recent version of the package.
In general, @plasmicpkgs/*
depend on @plasmicapp/host
because it is the package that is used by Plasmic Studio to register components.
But you may also need others such as @plasmicapp/data-sources
.
So a typical package.json
might look like this:
{
"devDependencies": {
"@plasmicapp/data-sources": "0.1.53",
"@plasmicapp/host": "1.0.119",
"@size-limit/preset-small-lib": "^4.11.0",
"@types/node": "^14.0.26",
"size-limit": "^4.11.0",
"tsdx": "^0.14.1",
"tslib": "^2.2.0",
"typescript": "^3.9.7"
},
"peerDependencies": {
"@plasmicapp/data-sources": ">=0.1.52",
"@plasmicapp/host": ">=1.0.0",
"react": ">=16.8.0",
"react-dom": ">=16.8.0"
},
"dependencies": {
"memoize-one": "^6.0.0"
}
}
The package must work for both codegen and loader users. This means that the register functions must have a optional parameter for the loader. It should also have an optional metadata parameter for users that want to use their own custom metadata.
export function registerFooBar(
loader?: { registerComponent: typeof registerComponent },
customFooBarMeta?: ComponentMeta<FooBarProps>
) {
if (loader) {
loader.registerComponent(FooBar, customFooBarMeta ?? FooBarMeta);
} else {
registerComponent(FooBar, customFooBarMeta ?? FooBarMeta);
}
}
Feel free to create wrapper components if it makes the final result better for the user. You also don't need to register all the props available for the component, only the ones that will be used in the studio.
Remember to export any wrapper components/types used to register the component. Everything should be also exported from the index.ts
file, so all the imports are from @plasmicpkgs/{package-name}
.
We recommend a registerAll()
function for an easy way to register all the available components in the package.
Checklist to test:
- Does your component behave well in the Studio in both editing and live preview modes?
- Do all of the props and slots work correctly?
- Have component tests been added to loader-tests to ensure that it works?
Remember that your package will be used by a wide variety of users, so it's important to have easy-to-use components, with good descriptions.
After testing in the Studio, it's also good to test both the available code options: loader and codegen. Testing codegen ensures your import paths are correct.