Development Workflow

Project Structure

The repository contains several packages and apps:

tns-core-modules - The core NativeScript TypeScript modules used to develop NativeScript apps
tns-core-modules-widgets - The native widgets (Java and Objective-C) used by the core NativeScript modules
e2e/ui-tests-app - UI app used for manual testing and automation
e2e - applications and e2e tests
tests - Unit tests app for the tns-core-modules
tns-platform-declarations - TypeScript definitions for Android and iOS native APIs

Working with the repo is organized with npm scripts, go and read through the scripts section in the package.json.

Managing dependencies:

tns-core-modules depends on:
- tns-platform-declarations
e2e/ui-tests-app depends on:
- tns-platform-declarations
- tns-core-modules
e2e depends on:
- tns-core-modules
tests depends on:
- tns-platform-declarations
- tns-core-modules

NOTE: tns-core-modules depends on tns-core-modules-widgets,

Initial Setup

Clone (or fork/clone) the repo:

git clone https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript.git

Install dependencies:

npm install

Running Unit Tests

cd tests
tns run android | ios

Running the UI Test App

The UI test app is an ordinary NativeScript app that logs the test results on the go. After the initial setup you can run the tests with:

cd e2e/ui-tests-app

# Run the Android app
tns platform add android@next # NOTE: do not commit this change to package.json
tns run android

# Run the iOS app
tns platform add ios@next # NOTE: do not commit this change to package.json
tns run ios

Running Another App

Open the app, where you will use the module from the repository in the console.
Add the tns-core-modules in the application via:

npm install --save <path to tns-core-modules>
# Example: npm install --save ../NativeScript/tns-core-modules

Run the app

tns run ios
tns run android

Platform declarations

To update the platform declarations (the ios.d.ts-es) you can run:

npm install
npm run dev-declarations

This script will update the iOS declarations. Android tools are not integrated yet. The declarations are generated from the test app and will include the native code from tns-core-modules-widgets.

Documentation API reference

The following will build the API reference pages in bin/dist/apiref:

npm run typedoc

If you want to improve on the documentation you can also build and start up dev web server:

npm run dev-typedoc

The terminal will point the address you can open in your web browser.

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