Contributing

First of all, thank you for contributing to Meilisearch! The goal of this document is to provide everything you need to know in order to contribute to Meilisearch and its different integrations.

• Coding with AI
• Assumptions
• How to Contribute
• Development Workflow
• Git Guidelines
• Release Process (for internal team only)

Coding with AI

We accept the use of AI-powered tools (GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, etc.) for contributions, whether for code, tests, or documentation.

⚠️ However, transparency is required: if you use AI assistance, please mention it in your PR description. This helps maintainers during code review and ensure the quality of contributions.

What we expect:

• Disclose AI usage: A simple note like "Used GitHub Copilot for autocompletion" or "Generated initial test structure with ChatGPT" is sufficient.
• Specify the scope: Indicate which parts of your contribution involved AI assistance.
• Review AI-generated content: Ensure you understand and have verified any AI-generated code before submitting.

Assumptions

1. You're familiar with GitHub and the Pull Request(PR) workflow.
2. You've read the Meilisearch documentation and the README.
3. You know about the Meilisearch community. Please use this for help.

How to Contribute

1. Make sure that the contribution you want to make is explained or detailed in a GitHub issue! Find an existing issue or open a new one.
2. Once done, fork the docs-searchbar.js repository in your own GitHub account. Ask a maintainer if you want your issue to be checked before making a PR.
3. Create a new Git branch.
4. Review the Development Workflow section that describes the steps to maintain the repository.
5. Make your changes on your branch. If you use AI tools during your work, remember to disclose it in your PR description (see Coding with AI).
6. Submit the branch as a PR pointing to the main branch of the main docs-searchbar.js repository. A maintainer should comment and/or review your Pull Request within a few days. Although depending on the circumstances, it may take longer.
   We do not enforce a naming convention for the PRs, but please use something descriptive of your changes, having in mind that the title of your PR will be automatically added to the next release changelog.

Development Workflow

Requirements

To run this project, you will need:

• Node.js >= v12 and node =< 18
• Yarn

Install

Install all the dependencies:

yarn install --dev

Tests and Linter

Each PR should pass the tests and the linter to be accepted.

# Run all the tests
yarn test
# With auto-reload
yarn test:watch
# End-to-end tests
yarn test:e2e
# Linter
yarn lint
# Linter with auto-correct
yarn lint:fix
# Prettier for Markdown (auto-correct)
yarn format:md
# Prettier for SCSS (auto-correct)
yarn format:scss

Playground

We provide a playground in this repository that hot-reloads on change. The playground points to a remote Meilisearch server that contains the scraped documentation of Meilisearch. You can play arround with the options and or just try out the search.

For example, type create an indxe to experience Meilisearch typo tolerance.

To launch and open the playground you first need to setup your Meilisearch with some documents to have something on which we can search.

yarn playground:setup

Then you can start the playground.

yarn playground

Build

yarn build

This command will build all files in ./dist. This includes regular and minified files for <script> inclusion, as well as classes import.

The command itself is split into yarn run build:js and yarn run build:css if you want to build a subset.

Git Guidelines

Git Branches

All changes must be made in a branch and submitted as PR. We do not enforce any branch naming style, but please use something descriptive of your changes.

Git Commits

As minimal requirements, your commit message should:

• be capitalized
• not finish by a dot or any other punctuation character (!,?)
• start with a verb so that we can read your commit message this way: "This commit will ...", where "..." is the commit message. e.g.: "Fix the home page button" or "Add more tests for create_index method"

We don't follow any other convention, but if you want to use one, we recommend this one.

GitHub Pull Requests

Some notes on GitHub PRs:

• Convert your PR as a draft if your changes are a work in progress: no one will review it until you pass your PR as ready for review.
  The draft PR can be very useful if you want to show that you are working on something and make your work visible.
• All PRs must be reviewed and approved by at least one maintainer.
• The PR title should be accurate and descriptive of the changes. The title of the PR will be indeed automatically added to the next release changelogs.

Release Process (for the internal team only)

Meilisearch tools follow the Semantic Versioning Convention.

Automated Changelogs

This project integrates a tool to create automated changelogs.
Read more about this.

How to Publish the Release

⚠️ Before doing anything, make sure you got through the guide about Releasing an Integration.

Make a PR modifying the files package.json and src/lib/version.js with the right version.

'version': 'X.X.X',

export default 'X.X.X'

Once the changes are merged on main, you can publish the current draft release via the GitHub interface: on this page, click on Edit (related to the draft release) > update the description (be sure you apply these recommendations) > when you are ready, click on Publish release.

GitHub Actions will be triggered and push the package to npm.

Release a beta Version

Here are the steps to release a beta version of this package:

• Create a new branch containing the "beta" changes with the following format xxx-beta where xxx explains the context.

  For example:

  • When implementing a beta feature, create a branch my-feature-beta where you implement the feature.

      git checkout -b my-feature-beta
    

  • During the Meilisearch pre-release, create a branch originating from bump-meilisearch-v*.*.* named meilisearch-v*.*.*-beta.
    v*.*.* is the next version of the package, NOT the version of Meilisearch!

    git checkout bump-meilisearch-v*.*.*
    git pull origin bump-meilisearch-v*.*.*
    git checkout -b bump-meilisearch-v*.*.*-beta
    

• Change the version in package.json and src/lib/version.js with *.*.*-xxx-beta.0 and commit it to the beta branch.

• Go to the GitHub interface for releasing: on this page, click on Draft a new release.

• Create a GitHub pre-release:

  • Fill the description with the detailed changelogs
  • Fill the title with vX.X.X-beta.0
  • Fill the tag with vX.X.X-beta.0
  • ⚠️ Select the vX.X.X-beta.0 branch and NOT main
  • ⚠️ Click on the "This is a pre-release" checkbox
  • Click on "Publish release"

GitHub Actions will be triggered and push the beta version to npm.

💡 If you need to release a new beta for the same version (i.e. vX.X.X-beta.1):

• merge the change into your beta branch
• change the version name in package.json
• creata a pre-release via the GitHub interface

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Thank you again for reading this through. We can not wait to begin to work with you if you make your way through this contributing guide ❤️