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SPFx Toolkit

Contributing Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the SharePoint Framework Toolkit extension. In this guide, we will walk you through the steps to get started.

👉 Before you start

Section titled “👉 Before you start”

In order to help us process your contributions, please make sure you do the following:

  • Don’t surprise us with big PRs. Instead, create an issue and start a discussion so we can agree on a direction before you invest a large amount of time.
  • Create your branch from dev (NOT main). This will make it easier for us to merge your changes.
  • Submit your PR to the dev branch of this repo (NOT main). PRs submitted to other branches will be declined.
  • Let us know what’s in the PR: sometimes code is not enough and in order to help us understand your awesome work please follow the PR template to provide required information.
  • Don’t commit code you didn’t write. Sure, Copilot may help 😉.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. We are here to help you succeed in making this a better product together.

👣 How to start - Minimal path to awesome

Section titled “👣 How to start - Minimal path to awesome”

⚠️ Important: Before you start, note that this product uses the CLI for Microsoft 365 under the hood. Currently, VS Code extensions do not support ECMAScript Modules (ESM), and starting from version 7.x, the CLI has been refactored to use ESM. To overcome this, we are using a fork of CLI that is still maintained in CommonJS (CJS). You can find it in the following Github repo/branch cli-cjs.

  • Fork this project. When creating the fork, deselect the checkbox ‘Copy the main branch only’ to get both main and dev branches.
  • Clone the forked repository.
  • In the cloned repository, run the npm install command: npm install. Please note that the recommended node version is 18.17.X or higher.
  • Clone the CJS version of CLI for Microsoft 365 from the following Github repo/branch cli-cjs
  • In the cloned CLI for Microsoft 365 repository, run: npm install, npm run clean, npm run build to generate the CLI for Microsoft 365 output. Make sure the cloned CLI for Microsoft 365 repository is in the same workspace as the SharePoint Framework Toolkit repository. For example, your folder structure should look like this:
root:
  - cli-microsoft365
  - vscode-viva
  • From the cloned fork of the SharePoint Framework Toolkit repository, navigate to the scripts folder and run the script cli-for-microsoft365-copy-local-version, passing the workspacePath (full path to the root folder of your workspace). This script will copy the output of the CLI for Microsoft 365 to the SharePoint Framework Toolkit extension’s node_modules folder.
  • Open the SharePoint Framework Toolkit project in Visual Studio Code.
  • Run the watch command: npm run watch.
  • Press F5 to start debugging the extension.

⚠️ Important: When debugging the SharePoint Framework Toolkit extension in the context of an SPFx project, you may notice errors in the debug console if the following folders are missing: .\.vscode\tours and .\.github\tours. These errors are caused by the CodeTour extension, a dependency of the SPFx Toolkit, and they do not affect the functionality of the SPFx Toolkit extension. To suppress these errors during debugging, you can create empty .tours folders in your project. Alternatively, you can safely ignore these errors as they do not impact the extension’s behavior.

👉 Repository branches

Section titled “👉 Repository branches”

You may have already noticed that this repo maintains two branches: main and dev. What’s even more important is that every feature branch should be created based on dev branch and Pull Requests should target dev branch not main. It’s important to understand why the meaning and purpose of each branch:

  • main - based on this branch new major and minor releases are created. Only critical bug fixes or feature updates go directly to this branch. All others should first be merged to dev branch and then merged to from dev to main with a separate PR. This branch is main repository branch and keeping clean change history is important.
  • dev - based on this branch pre-releases are created. Every change should be merged to this branch first with a PR before they get merged to main branch. During the release flow, this branch may be rebased and force pushed against main branch, so it may be recreated based on the current main branch state.

🧪 Tests

Section titled “🧪 Tests”

To run tests in debug mode:

  1. install extension https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.extension-test-runner
  2. run npm run package && npm run compile-tests
  3. run Extension Tests in debug

image

To run:

  1. run npm run package && npm run compile-tests
  2. run npm run test and check the result in terminal

📝 Documentation

Section titled “📝 Documentation”

SPFx Toolkit documentation is built using Astro Starlight and hosted at https://pnp.github.io/vscode-viva

When you open a PR, make sure the relevant documentation is updated as well.

All documentation pages are written in MDX format (.mdx) and located in the /docs folder. Here’s an overview of the folder structure:

docs/
├── assets/                   # Images and other static assets
├── public/                   # Public assets accessible via URL
├── src/
│   ├── components/           # Astro components
│   ├── content/
│   │   └── docs/             # All documentation pages (.mdx files)
│   │       ├── about/        # About pages (changelog, team, etc.)
│   │       ├── features/     # Feature pages (setup, sign in, etc.)
│   │       ├── index.mdx     # Homepage
│   │       └── ...
│   └── styles/
│       └── docs.css          # Custom styling
└── astro.config.mjs          # Astro configuration and sidebar navigation

⚠️ Important: If your page includes screenshots or other static assets, store them under docs/assets/images/. This ensures they are not bundled into the VSIX extension package.

🚀 Running Documentation Locally

Section titled “🚀 Running Documentation Locally”

To run docs locally and preview your changes:

  1. run cd docs
  2. run npm install
  3. run npm run start
  4. Open the URL shown in the terminal (usually http://localhost:4321). The site reloads automatically when changes are saved.

✍️ Documentation Writing Guidelines

Section titled “✍️ Documentation Writing Guidelines”

When writing or editing documentation, follow these guidelines:

  • Use a friendly but professional tone
  • Avoid slang or overly casual language
  • Do not use 100% AI-generated content
  • Place your file in the correct folder based on its purpose