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U.S. Web Design System documentation

This repo includes code and documentation for the U.S. Web Design System website. For information on the Design System (components) themselves, please visit web-design-standards.

Note that this README includes steps to pull the latest version of the Design System into your local instance of the documentation.

Running locally

The U.S. Web Design System documentation is built using Jekyll for the file framework, gulp for task management, and the node module for the Design System.

Before you start

You will need to have the following installed on your machine before following the commands below:

  1. Ruby v2.2.2+, Installation guides
  2. Node v4.2.3+, Installation guides
  3. Bundler v1.12.3+, Installation guides
  4. Chrome v59 or higher (v60 if on Windows)

Building the documentation with gulp

Some parts of the documentation are built using gulp.

To work on the site, switch to your local copy of the repository in terminal then run the following command to install project dependencies:

npm install

Now that all of your dependencies are installed, you can run your local server by running the following command:

npm start

Go to 127.0.0.1:4000 in your browser — you should be viewing a local instance of designsystem.digital.gov.

Here are a few other utility commands you may find useful:

  • npm run clean: Cleans out copied-over dependency assets.

  • npm run lint: Runs eslint and sass-lint against JavaScript and Sass files.

  • npm test: Runs all tests and linters.

  • npm run watch: Runs a series of commands that watches for any changes in both the Design System node module and the root level asset folders in this repo.

  • npm start -- --incremental: Runs your local server with incremental regeneration enabled to greatly improve build time. Use instead of npm start.

Using the latest version of the uswds package

Sometimes you will want to use the latest version of the web-design-standards repo. Follow these steps to do so:

  1. Clone the latest version of the web-design-standards repo.
  2. Run npm install to install the dependencies required for the package in the web-design-standards directory.
  3. Run npm run build to create the built version of the Design System in the web-design-standards directory.
  4. Run npm link in the root level of the web-design-standards directory on your local machine.
  5. Run npm link uswds in the root level of the web-design-standards-docs directory on your local machine.
  6. Set the FRACTAL_BASE_URL env var to the running fractal instance for web-design-standards. In your terminal window in the web-design-standards-docs directory, enter export FRACTAL_BASE_URL="http://127.0.0.1:3000".
  7. Run npm run watch in both project directories to have changes automatically built and compiled on changes to any asset files.
  8. In a new terminal window, run npm start in the web-design-standards-docs directory to start the Jekyll server locally.

You are now using the latest version of the Design System via your cloned version on your local machine. To stop using this version, type npm unlink uswds from the root level of the web-design-standards-docs directory.

Fractal components

The Design System uses the fractal design system builder to organize and document the components. This documentation site pulls the components from fractal to showcase them on the site. This is done with a custom fractal_component Jekyll tag, which takes the full name of the fractal component as a parameter.

Deployment and previews

This site is deployed on Federalist, which automatically builds the site whenever commits are pushed to master.

Federalist also builds public previews for each branch pushed to GitHub. For instance, to see the latest build of the develop branch, visit:

https://federalist.fr.cloud.gov/preview/18f/web-design-standards-docs/develop/

Updating the USWDS version

To update the version of USWDS being used, change the version that package.json specifies in its dependencies section.

We currently pull USWDS via git rather than npm, as it allows us to use any tag or commit during development. To install a specific commit, you can use e.g.:

npm install --save "uswds/uswds#fb49e4f"

Alternatively, to use a specific version tag, use e.g.:

npm install --save "uswds/uswds#v1.3.1"

This version number or commit hash is automatically parsed when the site is built and used for display on the site (see _plugins/uswds_version.rb for details). Therefore, be sure to use an actual version tag on all master branch commits--otherwise a commit hash will show up as the version on the production site, which would be confusing.

Adding content to the "Updates" section

See the _posts directory for instructions on adding updates.

Dynamic content

Some of the content on the documentation site is dynamically fetched from GitHub. If you want to ensure that its API won't rate-limit you, you may want to create an access token and assign it to your GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable.

The dynamic content is stored in the .jekyll_get_cache directory and won't be re-fetched once it's cached there. However, this means that your data can get stale over time, so if you want to ensure that your site is using the very latest data, you'll want to clear the cache by running:

rm -rf .jekyll_get_cache

Contributing

Please read through our contributing guidelines. These guidelines are directions for opening issues and submitting pull requests, and they also detail the coding and design standards we follow.