Contributing

July 8, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

To develop Vike's documentation (https://vike.dev):

To develop Vike's source code:


Get started

1. Install

git clone git@github.com:vikejs/vike
cd vike/ # Go to the monorepo root
pnpm install

Note

See System requirements for how to install pnpm.

2. Build

To build Vike's source code:

pnpm build # At the monorepo root

Or, if you want to watch & re-build upon modifications:

pnpm run dev # At the monorepo root

Note

When switching Git branches, you may need to run $ pnpm reset (at the monorepo root): it will re-install and re-build everything. It's required when switching to a branch that, for example, changes the dependencies list of package.json.

3. Try

To try your modifications, open a second shell and run:

cd examples/react-full/ # or another example
pnpm run dev

Warning

After changing the source code of Vike, make sure to always clear Vite's client cache with $ rm -rf examples/some-example/node_modules/.vite/. Otherwise you'll get a version mismatch between the server (using the latest build) and the client (using the previous cached build).


Run tests

Run all

At the monorepo root:

# Run the unit tests /**/*.spec.js
pnpm exec vitest --project unit

# Run the end-to-end tests /**/*.test.js
pnpm exec test-e2e

Tip

The end-to-end tests can take a lot of time. We therefore recommend the following:

  • Instead of running all end-to-end tests, run only the end-to-end tests of one example.
  • Instead of running all end-to-end tests locally, run them on GitHub: push your changes to your Vike fork (github.com/your-username/vike) and see the result of all end-to-end tests on the GitHub actions of your fork. On GitHub, the tests run in parallel and thus much faster than locally.

Note

On Debian, these additional steps are required.

Run subset

To run the end-to-end tests of only one example:

cd examples/some-example/ # From the monorepo root
pnpm exec test-e2e

Or:

# Filter
pnpm exec test-e2e ome-exampl # At the monorepo root

Docs

To develop Vike's documentation (https://vike.dev):

1. Install

git clone git@github.com:vikejs/vike
cd vike/ # Go to the monorepo root
pnpm install

Note

See System requirements for how to install pnpm.

2. Build Vike

pnpm build # At the monorepo root

3. Develop docs

cd docs/ # From the monorepo root
pnpm run dev

System requirements

  • Node.js >=20.0.0
  • pnpm

Note

To install pnpm run:

npm install -g pnpm

(Or see pnpm Docs > Installation for alternative methods.)

Note

These requirements are only needed for developing the source code of Vike. The npm package vike itself can be used with any package manager.