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Developing Shakapacker

It's a little trickier for Rails developers to work on the JS code of a project like shakacode/shakapacker. So here are some tips!

Use some test app​

For example, for React on Rails Changes, I'm using shakacode/react_on_rails_tutorial_with_ssr_and_hmr_fast_refresh. This directory is the TEST_APP_DIR.

Fork shakacode/shakapacker​

Let's call the shakacode/shakapacker directory SHAKAPACKER_DIR which has shakacode/shakapacker's package.json.

Changing the Package​

Setup with Yalc​

Use yalc unless you like yak shaving weird errors.

  1. In SHAKAPACKER_DIR, run yalc publish
  2. In TEST_APP_DIR, run yalc link shakapacker

Update the Package Code​

  1. Make some JS change in SHAKAPACKER_DIR
  2. Run yalc push and your changes will be pushed to your TEST_APP_DIR's node_modules.
  3. You may need to run yarn in TEST_APP_DIR if you added or removed dependencies of shakacode/shakapacker.

Updating the Ruby Code​

For the Ruby part, just change the gem reference TEST_APP_DIR, like:

gem "shakapacker", path: "../../forks/shakapacker"