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Environment Setup

This guide provides instructions for setting up a development environment and contributing to the homelab-helper project.

Prerequisites​

Before getting started, ensure you have:

  • Go (1.21 or later recommended)
  • Node.js (22.21.0 recommended, for documentation development)
  • Git for version control
  • Make for development automation
  • Docker (optional, if using devcontainers)
  • A code editor (VSCode recommended)

Quick Start​

The project includes a devcontainer configuration that sets up a complete development environment.

  1. Open the project in VSCode with the Dev Containers extension
  2. Reopen in Container: Press Ctrl+Shift+P (or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and select "Dev Containers: Reopen in Container"
  3. Wait for setup: The devcontainer will automatically run the setup scripts which installs dependencies and tooling

Option 2: Local Development Setup​

If you prefer local development without devcontainers:

  1. Install Go and Node.js and Make

  2. Install project dependencies:

make install-project

This installs npm dependencies and links the homelab CLI globally.

  1. Install tooling (required for some operations):
Non-standard PATH

By default, this Makefile target installs to the local .bin folder. This directory will need to be added to your system PATH.

Alternatively, use BIN=/usr/local/bin make install-tools to install tools to a system location.

make install-tools
  1. Install documentation dependencies (if working on docs):
make install-docs

Documentation Development​

The project uses Docusaurus for documentation.

Local Documentation Server​

Start the development server:

make dev-docs

This starts a local server on localhost:3000 with live reloading.

Code Formatting​

The project uses gofmt for formatting Go files and Prettier for everything else. Format on save is configured automatically in devcontainers.