urbit/pkg/interface/CONTRIBUTING.md

## Introduction

Thanks for your interest in contributing to the Urbit interface. This section
specifically focuses on Landscape development. Landscape lets you integrate your
ship with front-end web applications accessed through the browser. It has a core
set of applications that accept contributions.

Related to Landscape is [Gall][gall], the Arvo vane that controls userspace
applications. Landscape applications will usually make good use of Gall, but
it's not strictly required if a Landscape application is not interacting with
ships directly.

## Starting the dev environment

From this directory, go to the config folder and copy `urbitrc-sample` to
`urbitrc`.

You should see the following:

```
module.exports = {
  URBIT_PIERS: [
    "/Users/user/ships/zod/home",
  ],
  herb: false,
  URL: 'http://localhost:80'
};
```

Change the URL to your livenet ship (if making front-end changes) or keep it the
same (if [developing on a local development ship][local]). Then, from
'pkg/interface':

```
npm install
npm run start
```

The dev server will start at `http://localhost:9000`. Sign in as you would
normally. Landscape will refresh automatically as you make changes.

## Linting

The Urbit interface uses Eslint to lint the JavaScript code. To install the
linter and for usage through the command, do the following:

```bash
$ cd ./pkg/interface
$ npm install
$ npm run lint
```

To use the linter, run npm scripts

```bash
$ npm run lint # lints all files in `interface`
$ npm run lint-file ./src/apps/chat/**/*.js # lints all .js files in `interface/chat`
$ npm run lint-file ./src/chat/app.js # lints a single chosen file
```

## Creating your own applications

If you'd like to create your own application for Landscape, the easiest way to
get started is using the [create-landscape-app][cla] repository template. It
provides a brief wizard when you run it with `npm start`, and has good
documentation for its everyday use -- just create a repo [using its
template][template], install and then start it, and you'll soon be up and
running.

[cla]: https://github.com/urbit/create-landscape-app
[template]: https://github.com/urbit/create-landscape-app/generate
[gall]:https://urbit.org/docs/learn/arvo/gall/
[local]: /CONTRIBUTING.md#fake-ships