This repo includes code and documentation for the U.S. Web Design System website. For information on the USWDS components and codebase, please visit our uswds Github repo.
Note that this README includes steps to pull the latest version of USWDS into your local instance of the documentation.
The U.S. Web Design System documentation is built using Jekyll for the file framework, gulp for task management, and the node module for USWDS.
Recommended before install:
You will need to have the following installed on your machine before following the commands below:
npm install you'll need to install python v2.7, which is the recommended version as of node-gyp@3.8.0. Once installed you can reference it via npm config set python /usr/bin/python2.7 or wherever you have installed. You can find that with whereis python command.bundler: failed to load command: jekyll (/usr/share/rvm/gems/ruby-3.0.2/bin/jekyll). Install ffi with the following flag to work around it gem install ffi -- --disable-system-libffi.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 commands to install project dependencies:
npm installbundle installNow that all of your dependencies are installed, you can run your local server by running the following command:
npm startGo 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 USWDS node module and the root level asset folders in this repo.
npm start -- --incremental or npm run serve: Runs your local server with incremental regeneration enabled to greatly improve build time. Use instead of npm start.
uswds packageSometimes you will want to use the latest version of the uswds repo. Follow these steps to do so:
uswds repo.npm install to install the dependencies required for the package in the uswds directory.npm run build to create the built version of USWDS in the uswds directory.npm link in the root level of the uswds directory on your local machine.npm link uswds in the root level of the uswds-site directory on your local machine.npm start in the uswds directory, and make a note of the Local URL that is being served.LIBRARY_BASE_URL env var to the running instance of uswds. In your terminal window in the uswds-site directory, enter export LIBRARY_BASE_URL="http://127.0.0.1:6006" (or the Local URL noted above).uswds-site window, run npm run serve in the uswds-site directory to start the Jekyll server.npm run watch in the uswds-site directory to have changes to that repo automatically built and compiled. Note: uswds-site will not automatically rebuild when there are changes in uswds, you'll need to trigger a site rebuild manually to reflect changes in the uswds repo.You are now linked and using the local version of USWDS. To unlink this version, type npm unlink uswds from the root level of the uswds directory.
This documentation site showcases USWDS components by pulling in pre-built HTML from the USWDS html-templates directory. This HTML is pulled in via a custom library_component Jekyll tag, which takes the full name of the component as a parameter.
This site is deployed on cloud.gov Pages, which automatically builds the public site whenever commits are pushed to main. Pages also builds public previews for each branch pushed to GitHub.
⚠️ When generating new sections, sometimes they fail to build on Pages. You can clear the cache by running a simple bundle update, which will trigger a fresh build.
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
main branch commits--otherwise a commit hash will show up as the
version on the production site, which would be confusing.
See the _posts directory for instructions on adding updates.
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_cachePlease 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.