Consistent scripts to rule them all

PostHog has 235 (at the time of writing) public repositories. Each of these repositories has a unique way to get the project up and running locally. To limit the friction of this we adapt GitHub's approach of scripts to rule them all. As they say:

Being able to get from git clone to an up-and-running project in a development environment is imperative for fast, reliable contributions.

Not every repository will need every script. Some repositories will need scripts custom to the environment (for example, make files). That's all fine. The goal is to have a baseline set of scripts that we can use to get a development environment up and a known location to look for those scripts.

Standard scripts at PostHog

When starting a new project, create a bin directory and include the following scripts (when relevant):

• bin/setup - Install or upgrade dependencies (Ex. npm packages, brew packages, etc. Usually run once after cloning the repository and occasionally to upgrade packages).
• bin/update - Updates dependencies after a pull. This could simply call bin/setup.
• bin/build - Build the project, for projects that are compiled such as C#, Java, etc.
• bin/start - Start the project. For SDKs, this might start an example server.
• bin/test - Run tests (Ex. npm test, bundle exec rspec, etc.). Also includes linting, formatting, etc.
• bin/fmt - Optional: Format/lint code. This can be called by test.
• bin/docs - Optional: Generate documentation artifacts like API and SDK references.

Warning: Some environments add bin to the .gitignore file by default because that's where they compile binaries to.

Example scripts are available in the PostHog/scripts repository.