Contributing to Status.im

This week I am working on making some bug fixes in the Status.im repository. Previously I’ve written about some minor contributions to this project, however, now I am trying to do something more significant.

I believe it would be helpful to explain to my future self as well as anybody wishing to contribute to Status any gotchas I experienced while contributing.

First thing is first, your best chance of being able to successfully build the environment is to either use Ubuntu or MacOS. Previously I’ve tried building on windows and was not successful.

The following will involve MacOS only as this is what I’ve been using to make contributions. Before starting anything you will need to have cloned the repository by running git clone https://github.com/status-im/status-react .

The next step is simple, change into the directory and run the environment setup script: make setup . That is all that needs to be done. This process may take a while.

To start building the project type make shell. This will create a Nix environment and must be run every time you wish to work on Status. Inside the shell you will have to run one of the following commands depending on the device you wish to test:

make startdev-ios-simulator
make startdev-ios-real
make startdev-android-avd
make startdev-android-genymotion
make startdev-android-real

Then, in a second terminal window:

make react-native

That’s it! You’re now ready to develop. Just remember to be patient as these scripts can take multiple hours to setup. Just be thankful it is all automated for you.