# Contributing
This is a guide to help those who are interested in contributing to VitePress!
## Prerequisites
- [yarn ](https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/install/ )
## Instructions
### Setup VitePress dev environment
1. Clone the VitePress repo
1. Install dependencies
```
yarn
```
1. Create symlink to allow projects to link to local VitePress dev environment
```bash
yarn link
```
- If it's successful, you should see the following message:
```
success Registered "vitepress".
info You can now run `yarn link "vitepress"` in the projects where you want to use this package and it will be used instead.
✨ Done in 0.05s.
```
1. Start VitePress local dev environment
```bash
yarn dev
```
### Setup local VitePress project
1. Open up terminal
1. Create a new folder
1. Initialize with `npm init`
1. Create a `docs` directory
1. Create an `index.md` file with some content inside of `/docs`
1. Add dependency to local VitePress dev environment
```bash
yarn link vitepress
```
1. Add script to run VitePress in `package.json`
- The following sample uses the command `dev` and assumes your VitePress site will live in the folder `docs`
```json
{
"name": "vitepress-project",
"dependencies": {},
"devDependencies": {},
"scripts": {
"dev": "vitepress dev docs",
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
}
}
```
- If successful, you should see a similar message to the following;
```
$ vitepress dev docs
vitepress v0.3.1
vite v0.20.2
listening at http://localhost:3000
```
And with that, you are now ready to contribute to the VitePress project! 🎉
## Releasing
After making sure tests are passing, run `yarn run release` (to be tested in non-unix environments like Windows) to run the bash script `scripts/release.sh` .
