From bbfa57b630c414aa60dd237a22aea15d53d77f20 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Will Crichton <wcrichto@cs.stanford.edu>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:46:05 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Create CONTRIBUTING.md

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 CONTRIBUTING.md | 44 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 44 insertions(+)
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+# Contribution Guide
+
+## Building from Source
+
+As prerequisites, you will need [Rust], [Node], [pnpm], [Depot], and [tauri-cli] installed.
+
+First, generate the Typescript bindings for the frontend:
+
+```
+cd rs/crates/repo-quest
+cargo run -p repo-quest --bin export-bindings
+```
+
+You need to do this any time a `#[derive(Type)]` type is changed.
+
+Next, in the same directory, run Tauri:
+
+```
+cargo tauri dev
+```
+
+That should be it!
+
+## Codebase Structure
+
+The codebase is a [Tauri] app. The backend is in the `rs/` directory, split primarily between `rs/crates/rq-core` (most of the functionality as a library) and `rs/crates/repo-quest` (the Tauri binary). 
+
+The frontend is a standard single-page web-app written with [React], in the `js/` directory. The frontend app is built using [Vite], and we use [pnpm] to manage dependencies. All these tools are orchestrated by our own tool [Depot].
+
+The backend and frontend talk to each other via Tauri commands and events. The type structure of commands/events is exported from Rust to Typescript via [tauri-specta].
+
+# Application Architecture
+
+RepoQuest does two things: (1) it orchestrates quests, and (2) it displays quest metadata to the user. (TODO: pick up from here explaining these things.)
+
+[pnpm]: https://pnpm.io/
+[Node]: https://nodejs.org/en
+[Rust]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
+[Depot]: https://github.com/cognitive-engineering-lab/depot
+[tauri-cli]: https://crates.io/crates/tauri-cli
+[Tauri]: https://v2.tauri.app/
+[React]: https://react.dev/
+[Vite]: https://vite.dev/
+[tauri-specta]: https://github.com/specta-rs/tauri-specta/