Development setup

The basic steps for setting up a development are as follows.

1. Ensure you’re running node version >=12.0.0, as specified by Docs EngineOpen external link.

2. Clone the docs site repo (@username/my-docs-site below):

   ~/ $ git clone git@github.com:username/my-docs-site.git

3. cd into my-docs-site and run npm install:

   ~/ $ cd my-docs-site
   ~/my-docs-site $ npm install

4. Run the engine’s bootstrap commandOpen external link:

   ~/my-docs-site $ npm run bootstrap

5. Run the local development server:

   ~/my-docs-site $ npm run develop

6. Open localhost:8000 in your browser to see your docs site.

At this point, you can make changes to the Markdown files inside the content directory (e.g. my-docs-site/src/content) to build or improve your docs site.

​Watch files for changes

If you are contributing to @cloudflare/cloudflare-docsOpen external link, you can use a command that starts the local development server and watches files for changes, updating the development server files automatically. To use this command:

1. Go to the local repo's root directory and run npm install:

   ~/cloudflare-docs/products/docs-engine $ cd ../..
   ~/cloudflare-docs $ npm install

2. Run the develop command passing the product folder name (the name of a products/ sub-folder) as an argument — for example, docs-engine:

   ~/cloudflare-docs $ npm run develop -- docs-engine

3. Open localhost:8000 in your browser to see your docs site. In this example, when you update any files under cloudflare-docs/products/docs-engine, the development server automatically updates the rendered docs site.

Currently, this script is only available in the Cloudflare Developers documentation repositoryOpen external link. If you are using the Docs Engine with a different documentation repository, you need to stop and restart npm run develop every time you make changes to files under src/content.