In this guide, we'll walk through how to get started with HSDS development.

Setup

First, we need to clone the Github repo to your computer. Open up your terminal, and run this command in the directory of your choice:

git clone git@github.com:helpscout/hsds-react.git

Next, go into that directory:

cd hsds-react

And install all the dependencies in the world...

npm install

Note: You can use Yarn if you like, but it is recommended you use npm, as that is what we use. This is to avoid install conflicts from yarn.lock vs package-lock.json.

Great 🌈! You've setup and installed all of HSDS's dependencies.

Development environment

HSDS's development environment is powered by Storybook. To fire up HSDS's Storybook, run the following command:

npm start

HSDS's start does a neat thing that automatically checks and installs dependencies for you. After the initial npm install, you most likely don't need to do this anymore when running npm start 💪.

Once Storybook builds, you'll be able to visit it at http://localhost:8900/.

The live version of HSDS's Storybook can be seen at https://hsds-react.netlify.com/.

Fantastic ✌️! You've got HSDS up and running on your computer.

Code editor

You can use whatever code editor you like! HSDS is typed using Flow. Because of this, we recommend using Visual Studio Code as it has pretty great Flow support.

Note: You may need to install Flow globally on your computer.

Git branch

Create a new git branch for your work. You can call it whatever you like (the more descriptive of your work, the better):

git checkout -b strong-component

Next

Let's create our new component in HSDS!