Hi! We're really excited that you're interested in contributing to Vite! Before submitting your contribution, please read through the following guide. We also suggest you read the Project Philosophy in our documentation.
You can use StackBlitz Codeflow to fix bugs or implement features. You'll see a Codeflow button on issues to start a PR to fix them. A button will also appear on PRs to review them without needing to check out the branch locally. When using Codeflow, the Vite repository will be cloned for you in an online editor, with the Vite package built in watch mode ready to test your changes. If you'd like to learn more, check out the Codeflow docs.
To develop locally, fork the Vite repository and clone it in your local machine. The Vite repo is a monorepo using pnpm workspaces. The package manager used to install and link dependencies must be pnpm.
To develop and test the core vite
package:
-
Run
pnpm i
in Vite's root folder. -
Run
pnpm run build
in Vite's root folder. -
If you are developing Vite itself, you can go to
packages/vite
and runpnpm run dev
to automatically rebuild Vite whenever you change its code.
You can alternatively use Vite.js Docker Dev for a containerized Docker setup for Vite.js development.
Vite uses pnpm v8. If you are working on multiple projects with different versions of pnpm, it's recommended to enable Corepack by running
corepack enable
.
We have a .git-blame-ignore-revs
file to ignore formatting changes.
To make this file used by git blame
, you need to run the following command.
git config --local blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs
To develop the docs/
site:
-
Run
pnpm run build
in Vite's root folder. This will generate the types fortwoslash
to work in the code examples. If the types are not available, errors will be logged in step 2 but does not prevent the site from working. -
Run
pnpm run docs
in Vite's root folder.
To use breakpoints and explore code execution, you can use the "Run and Debug" feature from VS Code.
-
Add a
debugger
statement where you want to stop the code execution. -
Click the "Run and Debug" icon in the activity bar of the editor, which opens the Run and Debug view.
-
Click the "JavaScript Debug Terminal" button in the Run and Debug view, which opens a terminal in VS Code.
-
From that terminal, go to
playground/xxx
, and runpnpm run dev
. -
The execution will stop at the
debugger
statement, and you can use the Debug toolbar to continue, step over, and restart the process...
Some errors are masked and hidden away because of the layers of abstraction and sandboxed nature added by Vitest, Playwright, and Chromium. In order to see what's actually going wrong and the contents of the devtools console in those instances, follow this setup:
-
Add a
debugger
statement to theplayground/vitestSetup.ts
->afterAll
hook. This will pause execution before the tests quit and the Playwright browser instance exits. -
Run the tests with the
debug-serve
script command, which will enable remote debugging:pnpm run debug-serve resolve
. -
Wait for inspector devtools to open in your browser and the debugger to attach.
-
In the sources panel in the right column, click the play button to resume execution, and allow the tests to run, which will open a Chromium instance.
-
Focusing the Chromium instance, you can open the browser devtools and inspect the console there to find the underlying problems.
-
To close everything, just stop the test process back in your terminal.
You may wish to test your locally modified copy of Vite against another package that is built with Vite. For pnpm, after building Vite, you can use pnpm.overrides
to do this. Note that pnpm.overrides
must be specified in the root package.json
, and you must list the package as a dependency in the root package.json
:
{
"dependencies": {
"vite": "^6.0.0"
},
"pnpm": {
"overrides": {
"vite": "link:../path/to/vite/packages/vite"
}
}
}
And re-run pnpm install
to link the package.
Each package under playground/
contains a __tests__
directory. The tests are run using Vitest + Playwright with custom integrations to make writing tests simple. The detailed setup is inside vitest.config.e2e.js
and playground/vitest*
files.
Some playgrounds define variants to run the same app using different config setups. By convention, when running a test spec file in a nested folder in __tests__
, the setup will try to use a config file named vite.config-{folderName}.js
at the playground's root. You can see an example of variants in the assets playground.
Before running the tests, make sure that Vite has been built. On Windows, you may want to activate Developer Mode to resolve issues with symlink creation for non-admins. Also, you may want to set git core.symlinks
to true
to resolve issues with symlinks in git.
Each integration test can be run under either dev server mode or build mode.
-
pnpm test
by default runs every integration test in both serve and build mode, and also unit tests. -
pnpm run test-serve
runs tests only under serve mode. -
pnpm run test-build
runs tests only under build mode. -
pnpm run test-serve [match]
orpnpm run test-build [match]
runs tests in specific packages that match the given filter. e.g.pnpm run test-serve asset
runs tests for bothplayground/asset
andvite/src/node/__tests__/asset
under serve mode.Note package matching is not available for the
pnpm test
script, which always runs all tests.
Other than tests under playground/
for integration tests, packages might contain unit tests under their __tests__
directory. Unit tests are powered by Vitest. The detailed config is inside vitest.config.ts
files.
-
pnpm run test-unit
runs unit tests under each package. -
pnpm run test-unit [match]
runs tests in specific packages that match the given filter.
Inside playground tests, you can import the page
object from ~utils
, which is a Playwright Page
instance that has already navigated to the served page of the current playground. So, writing a test is as simple as:
import { page } from '~utils'
test('should work', async () => {
expect(await page.textContent('.foo')).toMatch('foo')
})
Some common test helpers (e.g. testDir
, isBuild
, or editFile
) are also available in the utils. Source code is located at playground/test-utils.ts
.
Note: The test build environment uses a different default set of Vite config to skip transpilation during tests to make it faster. This may produce a different result compared to the default production build.
To add new tests, you should find a related playground to the fix or feature (or create a new one). As an example, static assets loading is tested in the assets playground. In this Vite app, there is a test for ?raw
imports with a section defined in the index.html
for it:
<h2>?raw import</h2>
<code class="raw"></code>
This will be modified with the result of a file import:
import rawSvg from './nested/fragment.svg?raw'
text('.raw', rawSvg)
...where the text
util is defined as:
function text(el, text) {
document.querySelector(el).textContent = text
}
In the spec tests, the modifications to the DOM listed above are used to test this feature:
test('?raw import', async () => {
expect(await page.textContent('.raw')).toMatch('SVG')
})
In many test cases, we need to mock dependencies using link:
and file:
protocols. pnpm
treats link:
as symlinks and file:
as hardlinks. To test dependencies as if they were copied into node_modules
, use the file:
protocol. Otherwise, use the link:
protocol.
For a mock dependency, make sure you add a @vitejs/test-
prefix to the package name. This will avoid possible issues like false-positive alerts.
You can set the --debug
option to turn on debugging logs (e.g. vite --debug resolve
). To see all debug logs, you can set vite --debug *
, but be warned that it will be quite noisy. You can run grep -r "createDebugger('vite:" packages/vite/src/
to see a list of available debug scopes.
-
Checkout a topic branch from a base branch (e.g.
main
), and merge back against that branch. -
If adding a new feature:
- Add accompanying test case.
- Provide a convincing reason to add this feature. Ideally, you should open a suggestion issue first, and have it approved before working on it.
-
If fixing a bug:
- If you are resolving a special issue, add
(fix #xxxx[,#xxxx])
(#xxxx is the issue id) in your PR title for a better release log (e.g.fix: update entities encoding/decoding (fix #3899)
). - Provide a detailed description of the bug in the PR. Live demo preferred.
- Add appropriate test coverage if applicable.
- If you are resolving a special issue, add
-
It's OK to have multiple small commits as you work on the PR. GitHub can automatically squash them before merging.
-
Make sure tests pass!
-
No need to worry about code style as long as you have installed the dev dependencies. Modified files are automatically formatted with Prettier on commit (by invoking Git Hooks via simple-git-hooks).
-
PR title must follow the commit message convention so that changelogs can be automatically generated.
The following section is mostly for maintainers who have commit access, but it's helpful to go through if you intend to make non-trivial contributions to the codebase.
flowchart TD
start{Followed issue
template?}
start --NO--> close1["Close and ask to
follow template"]
start --YES--> dupe{Is duplicate?}
dupe --YES--> close2[Close and point
to duplicate]
dupe --NO--> repro{Has proper
reproduction?}
repro --NO--> close3[Label: 'needs reproduction'
bot will auto close if no update
has been made in 3 days]
repro --YES--> real{Is actually a bug?}
real --NO--> intended{Is the intended
behaviour?}
intended --YES--> explain[Explain and close
point to docs if needed]
intended --NO--> open[Keep open for discussion
Remove 'pending triage' label]
real --YES--> real2["① Remove 'pending triage' label
② Add related feature label if applicable
(e.g. 'feat: ssr')
③ Add priority and meta labels (see below)"]
real2 --> unusable{Does the
bug make Vite
unusable?}
unusable --YES--> maj{Does the bug
affect the majority
of Vite users?}
maj --YES--> p5[p5: urgent]
maj --NO--> p4[p4: important]
unusable --NO--> workarounds{Are there
workarounds for
the bug?}
workarounds --NO--> p3[p3: minor bug]
workarounds --YES--> p2[p2: edge case
has workaround]
flowchart TD
start{Bug fix
or
feature}
start --BUG FIX--> strict_bug{"Is this a 'strict fix'?
i.e. fixes an obvious oversight with no side effects"}
start --FEATURE--> feature[• Discuss feature necessity
• Is there a better way to address the need?
• Review code quality
• Add labels
• Add to milestone
• Add to Team Board]
feature -.-> approve_non_strict[• Run vite-ecosystem-ci if needed
• Approve if you feel strongly that the PR is needed and add to milestone]
strict_bug --YES--> strict[• Verify the fix locally
• Review code quality
• Require test case if applicable
• Request changes if necessary
• Add labels]
strict_bug --NO--> non_strict[Discuss the potential side effects of the fix, e.g.
• Could it introduce implicit behavior changes in other cases?
• Does it introduce too much changes?
• Add labels
• Add to Team Board]
non_strict -.-> approve_non_strict
strict --> approve_strict[Approve if ready to be merged]
approve_strict --> merge_strict[Merge if approved by 2 or more team members]
approve_non_strict -.-> merge_non_strict[Merge if approved by 2 or more team members and the PR has been discussed in a team meeting]
merge_non_strict -.-> merge_extra
merge_strict --> merge_extra["• Use 'Squash and Merge'
• Edit commit message to follow convention
• In commit message body, list relevant issues being fixed e.g. 'fix #1234, fix #1235'"]
Vite aims to be lightweight, and this includes being aware of the number of npm dependencies and their size.
We use Rollup to pre-bundle most dependencies before publishing! Therefore, most dependencies, even those used in runtime source code, should be added under devDependencies
by default. This also creates the following constraints that we need to be aware of in the codebase.
In some cases, we intentionally lazy-require some dependencies to improve start-up performance. However, note that we cannot use simple require('somedep')
calls since these are ignored in ESM files, so the dependency won't be included in the bundle, and the actual dependency won't even be there when published since they are in devDependencies
.
Instead, use (await import('somedep')).default
.
Most deps should be added to devDependencies
even if they are needed at runtime. Some exceptions are:
- Type packages. Example:
@types/*
. - Deps that cannot be properly bundled due to binary files. Example:
esbuild
. - Deps that ship their own types that are used in Vite's own public types. Example:
rollup
.
Avoid deps with large transitive dependencies that result in bloated size compared to the functionality it provides. For example, http-proxy
itself plus @types/http-proxy
is a little over 1MB in size, but http-proxy-middleware
pulls in a ton of dependencies that make it 7MB(!) when a minimal custom middleware on top of http-proxy
only requires a couple of lines of code.
Vite aims to be fully usable as a dependency in a TypeScript project (e.g. it should provide proper typings for VitePress), and also in vite.config.ts
. This means technically a dependency whose types are exposed needs to be part of dependencies
instead of devDependencies
. However, this also means we won't be able to bundle it.
To get around this, we inline some of these dependencies' types in packages/vite/src/types
. This way, we can still expose the typing but bundle the dependency's source code.
Use pnpm run build-types-check
to check that the bundled types do not rely on types in devDependencies
.
For types shared between client and node, they should be added into packages/vite/types
. These types are not bundled and are published as is (though they are still considered internal). Dependency types within this directory (e.g. packages/vite/types/chokidar.d.ts
) are deprecated and should be added to packages/vite/src/types
instead.
We already have many config options, and we should avoid fixing an issue by adding yet another one. Before adding an option, consider whether the problem:
- is really worth addressing
- can be fixed with a smarter default
- has workaround using existing options
- can be addressed with a plugin instead
If you have publish access, the steps below explain how to cut a release for a package. There are two phases for the release step: "Release" and "Publish".
"Release" is done locally to generate the changelogs and git tags:
- Make sure the git remote for https://github.com/vitejs/vite is set as
origin
. - In the
vite
project rootmain
branch, rungit pull
andpnpm i
to get it up-to-date. Then runpnpm build
. - Run
pnpm release
and follow the prompts to cut a release for a package. It will generate the changelog, a git release tag, and push them toorigin
. You can run with the--dry
flag to test it out. - When the command finishes, it will provide a link to https://github.com/vitejs/vite/actions/workflows/publish.yml.
- Click the link to visit the page, and follow the next steps below.
"Publish" is done on GitHub Actions to publish the package to npm:
- Shortly in the workflows page, a new workflow will appear for the released package and is waiting for approval to publish to npm.
- Click on the workflow to open its page.
- Click on the "Review deployments" button in the yellow box, a popup will appear.
- Check "Release" and click "Approve and deploy".
- The package will start publishing to npm.
To add a new language to the Vite docs, see vite-docs-template
.