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Contributing to Void

Welcome! 👋

This is the official guide on how to contribute to Void. We want to make it as easy as possible to contribute, so if you have any questions or comments, reach out via email or discord!

There are a few ways to contribute:

  • 💫 Complete items on the Roadmap.
  • 💡 Make suggestions in our Discord.
  • 🪴 Start new Issues - see Issues.

Codebase Guide

We highly recommend reading this guide that we put together on Void's sourcecode if you'd like to add new features.

The repo is not as intimidating as it first seems if you read the guide!

Most of Void's code lives in the folder src/vs/workbench/contrib/void/.

Building Void

a. Mac - Build Prerequisites

If you're using a Mac, you need Python and XCode. You probably have these by default.

b. Windows - Build Prerequisites

If you're using a Windows computer, first get Visual Studio 2022 (recommended) or VS Build Tools (not recommended). If you already have both, you might need to run the next few steps on both of them.

Go to the "Workloads" tab and select:

  • Desktop development with C++
  • Node.js build tools

Go to the "Individual Components" tab and select:

  • MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 Spectre-mitigated libs (Latest)
  • C++ ATL for latest build tools with Spectre Mitigations
  • C++ MFC for latest build tools with Spectre Mitigations

Finally, click Install.

c. Linux - Build Prerequisites

First, run npm install -g node-gyp. Then:

  • Debian (Ubuntu, etc): sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libsecret-1-dev libkrb5-dev python-is-python3.
  • Red Hat (Fedora, etc): sudo dnf install @development-tools gcc gcc-c++ make libsecret-devel krb5-devel libX11-devel libxkbfile-devel.
  • Others: see How to Contribute.

d. Building Void from inside VSCode

  1. git clone https://github.com/voideditor/void to clone the repo.
  2. npm install to install all dependencies.
  3. To build Void, open VSCode. Then:
    • Windows: Press Ctrl+Shift+B.
    • Mac: Press Cmd+Shift+B.
    • Linux: Press Ctrl+Shift+B.
    • This step can take ~5 min. The build is done when you see two check marks (one of the items will continue spinning indefinitely - it compiles our React code).
  4. To run Void:
    • Windows: ./scripts/code.bat.
    • Mac: ./scripts/code.sh.
    • Linux: ./scripts/code.sh.
  5. Nice-to-knows.
    • You can always press Ctrl+R (Cmd+R) inside the new window to reload and see your new changes. It's faster than Ctrl+Shift+P and Reload Window.
    • You might want to add the flags --user-data-dir ./.tmp/user-data --extensions-dir ./.tmp/extensions to the above run command, which lets you delete the .tmp folder to reset any IDE changes you made when testing.
    • You can kill any of the build scripts by pressing Ctrl+D in VSCode terminal. If you press Ctrl+C the script will close but will keep running in the background (to open all background scripts, just re-build).

If you get any errors, scroll down for common fixes.

Building Void from Terminal

To build Void from the terminal instead of from inside VSCode, follow the steps above, but instead of pressing Cmd+Shift+B, run npm run watch. The build is done when you see something like this:

[watch-extensions] [00:37:39] Finished compilation extensions with 0 errors after 19303 ms
[watch-client    ] [00:38:06] Finished compilation with 0 errors after 46248 ms
[watch-client    ] [00:38:07] Starting compilation...
[watch-client    ] [00:38:07] Finished compilation with 0 errors after 5 ms

Common Fixes

  • Make sure you followed the prerequisite steps above.
  • Make sure you have Node version 20.18.2 (the version in .nvmrc)!
    • You can do this easily without touching your base installation with nvm. Simply run nvm install, followed by nvm use and it will automatically install and use the version specified in nvmrc.
  • Make sure that the path to your Void folder does not have any spaces in it.
  • If you get "TypeError: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module", make sure all imports end with .js.
  • If you get an error with React, try running NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=8192" npm run buildreact.
  • If you see missing styles, wait a few seconds and then reload.
  • If you get errors like npm error libtool: error: unrecognised option: '-static', when running ./scripts/code.sh, make sure you have GNU libtool instead of BSD libtool (BSD is the default in macos)
  • If you get erorrs like The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly when running ./scripts/code.sh, run sudo chown root:root .build/electron/chrome-sandbox && sudo chmod 4755 .build/electron/chrome-sandbox and then run ./scripts/code.sh again.
  • If you have any other questions, feel free to submit an issue. You can also refer to VSCode's complete How to Contribute page.

Packaging

We don't usually recommend packaging. Instead, you should probably just build. If you're sure you want to package Void into an executable app, make sure you've built first, then run one of the following commands. This will create a folder named VSCode-darwin-arm64 or similar outside of the void/ repo (see below). Be patient - packaging can take ~25 minutes.

Mac

  • npm run gulp vscode-darwin-arm64 - most common (Apple Silicon)
  • npm run gulp vscode-darwin-x64 (Intel)

Windows

  • npm run gulp vscode-win32-x64 - most common
  • npm run gulp vscode-win32-arm64

Linux

  • npm run gulp vscode-linux-x64 - most common
  • npm run gulp vscode-linux-arm64

Output

This will generate a folder outside of void/:

workspace/
├── void/   # Your Void fork
└── VSCode-darwin-arm64/ # Generated output

Distributing

Void's maintainers distribute Void on our website and in releases. Our build pipeline is a fork of VSCodium, and it works by running GitHub Actions which create the downloadables. The build repo with more instructions lives here.

Pull Request Guidelines

  • Please submit a pull request once you've made a change.
  • No need to submit an Issue unless you're creating a new feature that might involve multiple PRs.
  • Please don't use AI to write your PR 🙂