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Spree codebase

Spree is written in Ruby on Rails framework and is mounted into a Rails application as a Rails Engine. Each of spree components (eg. Storefront) is distributed as a separate gem, eg. spree_storefront, inside a subdirectory of the spree directory, eg. spree/storefront.

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Spree namespace

All Spree models, controllers and other Ruby classes are namespaced by the Spree keyword, eg. Spree::Product. This means that those files are also located in spree sub-directories eg. app/models/spree/product.rb.

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Forking Spree repo

Go to Spree GitHub repository and click the Fork button. This will create a copy of the Spree repository on your GitHub account. See Github Documentation for more information on forking.

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Local setup

  1. Clone your fork repository 
    git clone git://github.com/your_github_username/spree.git && cd spree
  2. Install ruby On MacOS, we recommend using rbenv to install Ruby. Firstly, install rbenv itself: 
    curl -fsSL https://rbenv.org/install.sh | bash
    Then, install Ruby: 
    rbenv init && rbenv install && rbenv global 3.3.0
  3. Install required libraries You will need SQLite (or PostgreSQL or MySQL) and libvips installed on your system. You can install them using the following commands: 
    brew install vips
    If you are using Ubuntu or Windows Linux Subsystem, you can install libvips using the following command: 
    sudo apt-get install libvips
    Please refer to the libvips installation guide for more information.
  4. Install the gem dependencies 
    bundle install

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Creating Sandbox application

Bellow command will setup a Rails application with Spree pre-installed with some data seeded: 
bin/sandbox.sh
By default, Sandbox uses the SQLite database. But you can switch to PostgreSQL or MySQL: 
DB=postgres DB_PASSWORD=password DB_USERNAME=postgres DB_HOST=localhost bin/sandbox.sh
We recommend sticking to SQLite for development purposes as it doesn’t require any additional setup.

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Running the application

Go to the sandbox directory: 
cd sandbox
And run the application using the following command: 
bin/dev
This will start the web server and all the necessary processes (such as Tailwind CSS compiler). You can access the application at http://localhost:3000. To access the Admin Panel, you can go to http://localhost:3000/admin. The default credentials for the Admin Panel are: 
Email: [email protected]
Password: spree123

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Performance in development mode

You may notice that your Spree store runs slower in development environment. This is caused by disabled caching and automatic reloading of code after each change.

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Caching

Caching is disabled by default. To turn on caching please run: 
bin/rails dev:cache
You will need to restart rails server after this change.

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Making changes

Create a new branch for your changes. Do not push changes to the main branch. Branch name should be human-readable and informative, eg.
  • bug fixes: fix/order-recalculation-total-bug
  • features: feature/my-new-amazing-feature

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Running Tests

We use CircleCI to run the tests for Spree. You can see the build statuses at https://circleci.com/gh/spree/spree. Each gem contains its own series of tests, and for each directory, you need to do a quick one-time creation of a test application and then you can use it to run the tests. For example, to run the tests for the core project. 
cd core
bundle exec rake test_app
bundle exec rspec
If you would like to run specs against a particular database you may specify the dummy app’s database, which defaults to sqlite3. 
DB=postgres bundle exec rake test_app
If you want to run specs for only a single spec file 
cd core
bundle exec rspec spec/models/spree/state_spec.rb
If you want to run a particular line of spec 
cd core
bundle exec rspec spec/models/spree/state_spec.rb:7

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Running integration tests on MacOS (only applicable for Admin Panel/Storefront)

We use chromedriver to run integration tests. To install it please use this command: 
brew cask install chromedriver

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Submitting Changes

Please keep your commit history meaningful and clear. This guide covers it quite well and we recommend reading it, not only for Spree project but for any IT project overall.
  1. Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository. 
    git push -u origin fix/order-recalculation-total-bug
  2. Create a Pull request - please follow this guide If your changes references Github issues, please mark which issue you’re fixing by adding Fixes #<number or url of the issue> in the commit name or PR title/description. This will automatically mark that issue as closed when your PR will be merged.
  3. Wait for CI to pass
  4. If CI passed wait for Spree Core team code review We’re aiming to review and leave feedback as soon as possible. We’ll leave you a meaningul feedback if needed.

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Troubleshooting

This section will help you troubleshoot common issues with Spree.

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libvips error

If you are using Spree 4.5 or higher, you may encounter the following libvips error: 
LoadError: Could not open library 'vips.so.42'
This error is usually an indication that you do not have libvips installed locally on your machine. Check that libvips is installed with vips -v, and if it is not installed, follow installation instructions here.

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That’s a wrap!

Thank you for participating in Open Source and improving Spree - you’re awesome!