RTVS/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to RTVS

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Contributor License Agreement

If your contribution is large enough, you will be asked to sign the Microsoft CLA (the CLA bot will tell you if it's necessary).

Development

Prerequisites

1. Visual Studio 2017 Preview or at least the latest available release. You must install C++, .NET Desktop, .NET Core (currently 1.1) and VS Extensibility components (VS SDK). Release/1_0 is the last branch buildable with Visual Studio 2015. Update 3 is required.

2. MSYS2. See instructions at the R-Host submodule.

3. R 3.4.0 or later; either one of:

   • CRAN R;
   • Microsoft R Open.

4. Wix Tools 3.11 (only needed if you want to build the remote services installer for Windows).

Getting the source code

This repository uses git submodules for some of its dependencies, so you will need to clone it with --recursive command line switch to obtain everything that is needed for a successful build:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Microsoft/RTVS.git

The remaining dependencies are referenced as NuGet packages, and will be automatically downloaded by VS during the build.

Building and running the product

1. Open R.sln solution file in Visual Studio 2017.
2. Set Microsoft.VisualStudio.R.Package as a startup project.
3. If you are not planning to build the installer MSI (see next section), you can also unload SetupRemote and SetupRHost projects.
4. Build the solution. Note that this will not build Setup by default.
5. Start Debugging (F5).
6. VS experimental instance should start, and you should see "R Tools" entry in the main menu.

Building the remote services installer

1. Build Setup project specifically (right-click on it in Solution Explorer and select "Build").
2. Look for the MSI that it generates under bin. Running it will install the product.