Gamut

The component library & design system for Codecademy. ✨

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This repository is a monorepo that we manage using Lerna. That means that we publish several packages to npm from the same codebase, including:

Gamut Kit

We provide a single package to manage the versions of a few core dependencies: gamut, gamut-icons, gamut-illustrations, gamut-patterns, gamut-styles. Since these packages are highly intertwined we suggest only installing @codecademy/gamut-kit when your app needs all of these.

gamut-kit: Include in your application instead of the individual packages to simplify version management.

• 

1. Run yarn add @codecademy/gamut-kit
2. Add each of the managed packages to your peer dependencies (this is required for enabling intellisense for these packages and does not have any effect on version resolution)

{
  "peerDependencies": {
    "@codecademy/gamut": "*",
    "@codecademy/gamut-icons": "*",
    "@codecademy/gamut-patterns": "*",
    "@codecademy/gamut-illustrations": "*",
    "@codecademy/gamut-styles": "*",
    "@codecademy/gamut-tests": "*",
    "@codecademy/variance": "*"
  }
}

Individual Packages

gamut: Our React UI component library

• 

gamut-styles: Utility styles for Gamut components and codecademy apps

• 

gamut-icons: SVG Icons for Gamut components and codecademy apps

• 

variance: TypeScript CSS in JS utility library

• 

styleguide: Styleguide Documentation & storybook development sandbox

Local development

1. Run yarn in the root directory
2. Run yarn build to build all of the packages (certain packages like gamut-icons need to be built to function in storybook).

Running the storybook styleguide

1. Run yarn start to start the storybook server
2. Add new stories to packages/styleguide/stories
3. Stories are written using storybook's Component Story Format

Publishing Modules

1. Make your changes in a feature branch, and get another engineer to review your code
2. After your code has been reviewed and tested, you can merge your branch into main.
3. Make sure to update your PR title and add a short description of your changes for the changelog (see the PR Title Guide)
4. To merge your changes, add the Ship It label to your Pull Request.
5. Once your branch is merged into main, it will be published automatically by CircleCI.
6. You can find the new version number on npmjs.com/package/, or find it in that package's package.json on the main branch

Publishing an alpha version of a module

Every PR that changes files in a package publishes alpha releases that you can use to test your changes across applications.

NOTE: in case an alpha build is not published upon opening of the PR or Draft PR, re-run the build-test check and that will re-run the alpha build publishing flows

1. Create a PR or Draft PR.
   • This will kickoff a Circle-CI workflow which will publish an alpha build. (This will appear in Github as the "Deploy")
2. After the alpha build is published, the codecademydev bot should comment on your PR with the names of the published alpha packages.
   
3. Install this version of the package in your application you wish to test your changes on.

Working with pre-published changes

NOTE: Due to the inconsistencies of symlinks in a lerna repo, instead of using yarn link, we recommend using the npm-link-better package with the --copy flag to copy packages into your local repo's node_modules directory.

Initial Setup:

1. Ensure you have npm-link-better installed: npm install -g npm-link-better
2. Ensure you've built the entire gamut repo since you last synced: yarn build

Instructions:

For each of your local gamut packages (e.g. gamut), you'll need to do 2 things to get it working in your project:

1. Make sure your package changes have been built into the gamut/packages/[package]/dist folder.

   • yarn build
     or
     yarn build:watch (not all packages support this yet)

2. Copy that built /dist folder to your project's node_modules/@codecademy/[package] folder.

   cd myProjectRepo
   npm-link-better --copy --watch path/to/gamut/packages/[package]

   NOTE: The --watch flag will automatically copy your package into node_modules everytime it is built.

Example Workflow

Let's say we are making changes to the gamut package, and our app that uses the gamut package uses yarn start to build, serve, and watch our app for changes.

Let's also assume these two repos are sibling directories inside of a folder called repos

repos
  |- gamut
  |- my-app

We would run the following commands in 3 separate shells

# Shell 1: Auto-build Gamut changes
cd repos/gamut/packages/gamut
yarn build:watch

# Shell 2: Auto-copy built Gamut changes to my-app.
cd repos/my-app
npm-link-better --copy --watch ../gamut/packages/gamut

# Shell 3: Auto-update app when anything changes.
cd repos/my-app
yarn start

This would allow us to make a change in our gamut package, and see that change automatically reflected in our local app in the browser.

Troubleshooting

• If you see compilation issues in your project's dev server after running npm-link-better, you may have to restart your app's dev server.

• If you are seeing compilation issues in a gamut package, you may need to rebuild the whole repository via

  yarn build

Instructions for using `yarn link` instead (not recommended)

For quicker development cycles, it's possible to run a pre-published version of Gamut in another project. We do that using symlinks (the following instructions assume you have set up and built Gamut):

1. cd /path/to/gamut/packages/gamut
2. yarn link
3. cd path/to/other/repo
4. yarn link @codecademy/gamut
5. yarn install

If your other project uses React, you must link that copy of React in Gamut:

1. cd path/to/other/repo
2. cd node_modules/react
3. yarn link
4. cd /path/to/gamut/packages/gamut
5. yarn link react
6. yarn build

See the docs for more information for why you have to do this.

Adding a New Package

1. Create a new directory at packages/<package-name>/package.json.
2. Use yarn lerna create to create the new package, copying values from existing package.jsons when unsure.
   • Also copy the publishConfig field to let your published package be public by default
3. Create a minimal amount of source code in the new package
   • Example: a simple tsconfig.json with a index.ts exporting a single object
4. Run yarn lerna bootstrap from the repository root
5. Send a feat PR adding that package
6. One merged, message out in our #frontend Slack channel to other Gamut developers to re-run yarn lerna bootstrap after they merge from main

Notes:

If your package will be used in other packages in the monorepo, you may need to set up aliases in jest and storybook so that they can be run without building your package first. You can find these aliases in jest.config.js and the styleguide storybook config.

NX

This monorepo uses NX to cache previous builds locally and in CI.

The config for NX is located at /nx.json, along with project.json files for each package.

For new packages, please use an NX generator plugin to create your initial package, this will ensure that all of the configuration for linting & testing is set up correctly.

PR Title Guide

Your PR Title should follow the Conventional Commits Format.

Because we automatically squash merge Pull Requests, you'll need to format your PR title to match these guidelines since the title will become the commit message.

Your individual commits will affect the alpha version number, but not the final version once you merge to main.

This Title format will be linted in the conventional-pr-title status check and prevent merging if you do not follow the correct format.

PR Title Format

When you click squash and merge, the title should follow this format:

type(scope): message

Examples:

fix: fixes a bug in some component

test: adds test to component

With a scope:

feat(Button): :sparkles: An awesome feature for the Button component

Breaking change:

feat(Button)!: :fire: Deleted the Button component

Check out the Conventional Commits page for more detailed options

Type

The type determines what kind of version bump is needed. A fix will create a patch release, while a feat will create a minor release. Major version updates require a special syntax that is described below.

type must be one of the following options:

Standard types:

• feat: A new feature
• fix: A bug fix
• style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
• docs: Documentation only changes
• perf: A code change that improves performance
• refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
• test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
• ci: Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts
• build: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies

Scope

A scope is optional and consists of a noun describing a section of the codebase surrounded by parenthesis, e.g., feat(Button):

Breaking Changes

Adding an exclamation point after your type, before the colon, will indicate that your PR contains a breaking change, and increment the major version number of the modules you changed.

Examples:

feat!: made a breaking change in the Button component

feat(Button)!: made a breaking change in the Button component

You should do this if your changes introduce any incompatibilities with previous versions of the module. This will indicate to package consumers that they need to refactor their usage of the module to upgrade.

Breaking Changes Release Process

Because Gamut is a separate repository from its consumers, it can be tricky to coordinate technically breaking changes. If your changes will require changes in any downstream repositories:

1. Create a PR in Gamut to create alpha package versions
2. Create PRs in the repositories using those alpha package versions
3. Update each downstream PR description to link to the Gamut PR, and vice versa
4. Once all PRs have been approved, merge your Gamut PR first
5. Update your repository PRs to use the new (non-alpha) package versions once published
6. Merge your repository PRs

This process minimizes the likelihood of accidental breaking changes in Gamut negatively affecting development on our other repositories.

Body

Optional extra description for your changes.

This goes in the description for your PR, between the <!--- CHANGELOG-DESCRIPTION --> comment tags in the PR template.

If you include the text BREAKING CHANGE: in your description it will trigger a major version bump. We prefer to use the feat!: syntax for breaking changes described above.

Publishing Storybook

Storybook is built and published automatically when there are merges into the main branch.