Skip to content

CONTRIBUTING.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
118 lines (80 loc) · 3.27 KB

CONTRIBUTING.md

File metadata and controls

118 lines (80 loc) · 3.27 KB

Contributing to ECA Desktop

Thank you for your interest in contributing! This guide will help you get set up and understand our development workflow.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

  • Node.js v18+
  • npm
  • Git (with submodule support)

Setup

# Clone with submodules
git clone --recursive https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca-desktop.git
cd eca-desktop

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Install webview dependencies
cd eca-webview && npm install && cd ..

# Start development
npm run dev

NixOS Users

Use the provided shell.nix:

nix-shell
npm install
npm run dev

Project Structure

Directory Purpose
src/main/ Electron main process — server lifecycle, IPC bridge, menu, updater
src/preload/ Secure context bridge between main and renderer
src/renderer/ Host HTML page, sidebar, welcome screen, styles
eca-webview/ Shared React SPA (git submodule)
resources/ App icons and static assets

Development Workflow

Running in Dev Mode

npm run dev

This starts the webview Vite dev server on localhost:5173 and launches Electron pointing to it, with hot reload for the renderer.

You can also run the two halves independently — useful when you want a single webview shared with eca-vscode / eca-intellij instances:

npm run dev:webview   # only the eca-webview Vite dev server (port 5173)
npm run dev:app       # only the desktop; waits for http://localhost:5173

Override the URL with ECA_WEBVIEW_URL (e.g. ECA_WEBVIEW_URL=http://localhost:6000 npm run dev:app) to point the desktop at a webview running on a non-default host/port.

Building

npm run build           # Build all (webview + main + preload + renderer)
npm run package         # Build + package for current platform
npm run package:mac     # Package for macOS
npm run package:linux   # Package for Linux

Linting

npm run lint

We use ESLint with typescript-eslint in strict mode. Please ensure your changes pass linting before submitting.

Testing

npm test

Submitting Changes

  1. Fork the repository and create a feature branch from main
  2. Make your changes with clear, descriptive commits
  3. Ensure npm run lint and npm test pass
  4. Open a Pull Request against main with a clear description of what and why

Commit Messages

Use clear, imperative-mood commit messages:

  • ✅ Add session persistence across restarts
  • ✅ Fix server download retry on timeout
  • ❌ fixed stuff
  • ❌ WIP

Architecture Notes

ECA Desktop follows a three-layer architecture:

  • Main Process (bridge.ts, router.ts): Orchestrates IPC messages from the renderer and JSON-RPC messages from the ECA server. The router.ts data-driven dispatch table is the central routing mechanism.
  • ECA Server (server.ts, rpc.ts): Manages downloading, spawning, and communicating with the native ECA binary over stdio using JSON-RPC.
  • Renderer (eca-webview): The shared React SPA communicates via the __ecaWebTransport interface, bridged through contextBridge in preload.ts.

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the Apache-2.0 License.