diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 7301543c248..fa39711af56 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -75,6 +75,20 @@ You can use `rustup component add --toolchain nightly rustfmt-preview` to instal
 `rustfmt +nightly --unstable-features --skip-children` on the changed files to automatically format your code.
 * Push your commits to GitHub and create a pull request against swc's `master` branch.
 
+## Getting your development environment set up
+
+After cloning the project there are a few steps required to get the project running.
+
+1. `git submodule update --init --recursive` This will pull in the ecmascript test suited
+2. Go to the folder `ecmascript/transforms` and run `yarn install`
+3. You need to setup some environment variables in order for the tests to run
+
+```
+RUST_MIN_STACK=16777216
+RUSTFLAGS="--cfg procmacro2_semver_exempt"
+```
+
+4. You can now run the tests with `RUST_BACKTRACE=full cargo test --color always --all --all-features`
 
 ## Pull requests