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:
Here's how you can start contributing to the Void extension. This is where you should get started if you're new.
- Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/voideditor/void
-
Open the folder
/extensions/void
in VSCode (open it in a new workspace, don't just cd into it). -
Install dependencies:
npm install
- Compile the React files by running
npm run build
. This build command converts all the Tailwind/React entrypoint files into raw .css and .js files indist/
.
npm run build
- Run the extension in a new window by pressing F5.
This will start a new instance of VSCode with the extension enabled. If this doesn't work, you can press Ctrl+Shift+P, select "Debug: Start Debugging", and select "VSCode Extension Development".
If you want to work on the full IDE, please follow the steps below. If you have any questions/issues, you can refer to VSCode's full How to Contribute page. Also feel free to submit an issue or get in touch with us with any build errors.
If you're using a Mac, make sure you have Python and XCode installed (you probably do by default).
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.
Open the installer for Visual Studio 2022 (or VS Build Tools). This is often automatic.
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.
We haven't created prerequisite steps for building on Linux yet, but you can follow How to Contribute.
Before building Void, please follow the prerequisite steps above for your operating system. Also, make sure you've already built and compiled the Void extension (or just run cd ./extensions/void && npm install && npm run build && npm run compile && cd ../..
).
To build Void, first open void/
in VSCode. Then:
- Install all dependencies.
npm install
- Press Ctrl+Shift+B, or if you prefer using the terminal run
npm run watch
.
This can take ~5 min.
If you ran Ctrl+Shift+B, the build is done when you see two check marks.
If you ran 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
- In a new terminal, run
./scripts/code.sh
(Mac/Linux) or./scripts/code.bat
(Windows). This should open up the built IDE! You can always press Ctrl+Shift+P and run "Reload Window" inside the new window to see changes without re-building.
Now that you're set up, feel free to check out our Issues page!
-
Make sure you have the same NodeJS version as
.nvmrc
. -
If you see
[ERROR] Cannot start service: Host version "0.23.1" does not match binary version "0.23.0"
, runnpm i -D [email protected]
or do a clean install of your npm dependencies.
To bundle the IDE into an executable, run npm run gulp vscode-darwin-arm64
.
Here are the full options: vscode-{win32-ia32 | win32-x64 | darwin-x64 | darwin-arm64 | linux-ia32 | linux-x64 | linux-arm}(-min)
Here are the most important topics on our Roadmap. More ⭐'s = more important. Please refer to our Issues page for the latest issues.
When the user submits a response or presses the apply/accept/reject button, we should add these events to the history, allowing the user to undo/redo them. Right now there is unexpected behavior if the user tries to undo or redo their changes.
When the user presses Ctrl+K, an input box should appear inline with the code that they were selecting. This is somewhat difficult to do because an extension alone cannot do this, and it requires creating a new component in the IDE. We think you can modify vscode's built-in "codelens" or "zone widget" components, but we are open to alternatives.
Examples: creating better code search, or supporting AI agents that can edit across files and make multiple LLM calls.
Eventually, we want to build a convenient API for creating AI tools. The API will provide methods for creating the UI (showing an autocomplete suggestion, or creating a new diff), detecting event changes (like onKeystroke
or onFileOpen
), and modifying the user's file-system (storing indexes associated with each file), making it much easier to make your own AI plugin. We plan on building these features further along in timeline, but we wanted to list them for completeness.
⭐ Let the user Accept / Reject all Diffs in an entire file via the sidebar.
We're always glad to talk about new ideas, help you get set up, and make sure your changes align with our vision for the project. Feel free to shoot us a message in the #general channel of the Discord for any reason. Please check in especially if you want to make a lot of changes or build a large new feature.
Please submit a pull request once you've made a change. You don't need to submit an issue.
Please don't use AI to write your PR 🙂.
We keep track of all the files we've changed with Void so it's easy to rebase:
-
README.md
-
CONTRIBUTING.md
-
VOID_USEFUL_LINKS.md
-
product.json
-
package.json
-
src/vs/workbench/api/common/{extHost.api.impl.ts | extHostApiCommands.ts}
-
src/vs/workbench/workbench.common.main.ts
-
src/vs/workbench/contrib/void/*
-
extensions/void/*
-
.github/*
-
.vscode/settings/*
-
.eslintrc.json
-
build/hygiene.js
-
build/lib/i18n.resources.json
-
build/npm/dirs.js
-
vscode.proposed.editorInsets.d.ts - not modified, but code copied
For some useful links we've compiled on VSCode, see VOID_USEFUL_LINKS.md
.