Thank you for interest in contributing to Ship. Here, you’ll find all the necessary information to get started.

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Ways to contribute

  • Fix Ship docs – fixing issues like bad wording, incomplete information, or missing examples in the documentation.
  • Fix Ship template - contribute to resolving bugs and enhancing the existing code in current template.
  • Give feedback and suggest improvements - report bugs through issues or suggest improvements.
  • Share Ship - share Ship link with everyone how can be interested.

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How to open pull request

  1. Fork the project.
  2. Set up the project locally.
  3. Create a new branch from the main branch, using a name that describes your changes.
  4. Implement your changes and create a commit.
  5. Open a pull request.
  6. Attach 3 labels:
  • “To Review” - indicates that the task is ready for review.
  • Functionality type - specify a type (Feature, Bug, or Improvement).
  • Edit location - specify the area of modification (docs, create-ship-app, node-mongo or template).
Your pull request will be checked by our team. If everything is well, it will be merged to main branch. If there are suggestions, we’ll leave comments and label it “Changes Requested”. You’ll get an email to let you know. Once you’ve implemented the necessary changes, please reattach the “To Review” tag.

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Documentation

We use Mintlify for documentation, located in the /docs folder. The docs are written in MDX format. Check out the Github Markdown Guide and Mintlify documentation to become familiar with this syntax.

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How to run documentation

  1. Install Mintlify globally.
Ensure that your Node.js version is 19.00.0 or higher.
pnpm i -g mintlify
  1. Execute the following command in the project’s root directory:
pnpm run docs
Documentation will be opened on http://localhost:3000 if it’s not in use.

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Packages

Within the /package folder, you’ll find two essential packages: create-ship-app and node-mongo. create-ship-app is simple CLI tool for bootstrapping Ship applications. Downloads actual template from Ship monorepo and configures it to run. Learn more in the documentation. node-mongo is lightweight reactive extension to official Node.js MongoDB driver. It’s used in the Ship template, and you can find details in the documentation.

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Ship template structure

The project template is in the /template folder and includes all necessary files and folders. Let’s explore the structure:
  • .github - contains scripts for Github actions.
  • .husky - contains a script that runs before committing and checks for ESLint errors.
  • .vscode - VS Code settings.
  • apps - contains API and WEB.
  • bin - contains scripts for setting up and starting the project.
  • packages - contains packages with shared code. Find more details about package sharing in our documentation.

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How to run Ship template

  1. Navigate to the /template folder:
cd template
  1. In /apps/api, copy the .env.example file with the name .env.
  2. Install dependencies: 
pnpm i
  1. Set up and start project
pnpm run start
The API will work on port 3001, WEB on port 3002, and Mailer on port 4000.

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Deployment

Ship can be deployed on four platforms: AWS, Digital Ocean Kubernetes, Digital Ocean Apps, and Render. Deployment settings are in the /deploy folder within the respective folders. When installing a project via npx create-ship-app, users can choose the deployment type, and the appropriate settings from the respective folder will be added to their project in the /deploy folder. To check deployment, create a new project via npx create-ship-app and attempt to deploy the app in your environment using the deployment instructions.