Developer Guide

Setup your environment

Prerequisites

You will need to install:

• git (or msysgit on Windows)
• node + npm

Advised option for Git

You're advised to set the push.default option of Git to current or simple. Prior to Git 2.0, the default option was matching, which is dangerous (it means you push all your local branches).

To do so, run either one of these commands (--global is added to let you add this option globally by default, but you can also remove it if you prefer):

git config push.default current
git config push.default simple

For more information, look at pus.default in this manual.

Cloning the Firebug project

Once Git being installed, you can run this command in the folder of your choice to clone the Firebug.next project:

git clone git@github.com:firebug/firebug.next.git

The project will be copied in ./firebug.next.

Install dependencies

Run this command in the firebug.next folder to install all dependencies

npm install

Install JPM

Run this command to install jpm (Jetpack Manager):

npm install -g jpm

Run Firebug.next

In the firebug.next folder, simply run:

jpm run

This will open a Firefox instance with Firebug.next intalled on it.

You can specify the path to a Firefox binary (and that may be another version of Firefox you downloaded):

jpm run -b /path/to/firefox

And you can also specify the path to one of your Firefox profile, like this:

jpm run -p ~/.mozilla/firefox/<uuid>.<profile name>/

Note that currently, this does just copy this profile to a temporary folder. In other words, any preference you change while running JPM will be lost after you close Firefox.

Contribute

Prepare to hack

A good practice is to pick an issue to start with. If not, you can submit one.

Then fetch the last modifications from the other developers:

git checkout master
git pull --rebase

and create a new branch on your machine (replace XXXX by the number of the issue you're about to work on):

git checkout -b issueXXXX master

Note that your branch is not submitted on Github until you push it.

Hack

Edit files in the Firebug.next project. Note that to take your changes into account, you have to restart Firefox every time.

Also take a look at the Debugging Tips to make your life much easier while hacking Firebug.

Committing and submitting

Once your work ready to push, you have to:

• index your work (so your changes will be ready to be committed)
• commit
• push your commit to Github

Before indexing, a good practice is to look at your changes:

git diff

Then you can index your change:

git add /path/to/file-to-add.js

Tip : use the -p of git add option to index your changes chunks by chunks.

Then commit (replace XXXX by the number of your commit):

git commit -m "#XXXX: SOME COMMIT MESSAGE HERE"

If you have access to the Firebug Working Group account, you should be able to commit directly your branch:

git push origin issueXXXX