CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Xray

It's really important to us to have a smooth on-ramp for contributors, and one great way you can contribute is by helping us improve this guide. If your experience is bumpy, can you help us make it smoother for the next person?

Building

So far, we have only built this project on macOS. If you'd like to help us improve our build or documentation to support other platforms, that would be a huge help!

Install system dependencies

Install Node v8.9.3

To install Node, you can install nvm and then run nvm install v8.9.3.

Later versions may work, but you should ideally run the build with the same version of Node that is bundled into Xray's current Electron dependency. If in doubt, you can check the version of the electron dependency in xray_electron/package.json, then run process.versions.node in the console of that version of Electron to ensure that these instructions haven't gotten out of date.

Install Rust

You can install Rust via rustup. We currently build correctly on Rust 1.24.1, but frequently build on the nightly channel in development to enable formatting of generated bindings. The nightly channel should not be required however, and if it is, that's a bug.

Build the Electron App

This repository contains several components in top-level folders prefixed with xray_*. The main applicaiton is located in xray_electron, and you can build it as follows:

# Move to this subdirectory of the repository:
cd xray_electron

# Install and build dependencies:
npm install

# Launch Electron:
npm start

If you want to rebuild the Rust dependencies after making changes and test them in the Electron app, run this:

# Rebuild Rust dependencies:
npm rebuild xray

Build other modules independently

If you're working on a particular subsystem, such as xray_core, you can build and test it independently of the Electron app. Each top-level module should have its own instructions in its README.