There are many ways to contribute to the Bot Framework Emulator project: reporting issues, submitting pull requests, and creating suggestions.
The Bot Framework Emulator project tracks issues and feature requests using GitHub issue tracker.
First, please do a search in open issues to see if the issue or feature request has already been filed. If there is an existing issue, add your comments to that issue.
If your issue is a question, consider asking it on Stack Overflow using the tag botbuilder
.
- Provide reproducible steps, what the result of the steps was, and what you would have expected to happen.
- Always file a single bug or feature request per issue. Do not list multiple bugs or requests in the same issue.
- Do not add your issue as a comment to an existing issue unless it's for the identical input. Many issues look similar, but have different causes.
- Include a screenshot or animated GIF.
Don't feel bad if we can't reproduce the issue and ask you for more information!
Bot Framework Emulator development requires that you install git and Node.JS.
Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/BotFramework-Emulator.git
cd BotFramework-Emulator
Install Node packages
npm install
Build
npm run build
Run
npm run start
Development in Visual Studio Code
With the project open in VSCode:
Ctrl+Shift+B
: build the projectF5
: debug the project
The Bot Framework Emulator has a multi-process architecture, meaning different parts of the app run in different processes.
These instructions are in some cases specific to Visual Studio Code.
Render Process
When you build and run the application locally, the Chrome Developer Tools are available in the app. They can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I
. Render process code can be debugged from within this tool.
TODO: Document debugging of render process using VSCode & the Debugger for Chrome extension.
Main Process
This is a NodeJS process, and can be debugged directly from VSCode. With the project open in VSCode, press F5
to start the application and attach to the Node debugging facility.
Before we can accept a pull request from you, you must agree to the Contributor License Agreement (CLA). It is an automated process and you only need to do this once.
To enable us to quickly review and accept your pull requests, always create one pull request per issue and link the issue in the pull request. Never merge multiple requests in one unless they have the same root cause. Keep code changes as small as possible. Avoid pure formatting changes to code that has not been modified otherwise.