Making changes to GOV.UK frontend locally

gistfile1.md

1. Run a rendering app

1. Checkout https://github.com/alphagov/government-frontend, install ruby, bundle etc
2. Run ./startup.sh --live to point to the live content store
3. Run PLEK_SERVICE_STATIC_URI=static.dev.gov.uk (or wherever static is running) to point to a local instance of static
4. This will take a minute to render a page(?)

Shared templates are loaded from static via slimmer, which magically merges templates together using nokogiri.

Slimmer may cache templates (?) although I don't think it's supposed to in development mode

2. Run static

1. https://github.com/alphagov/static
2. Static will use the published version of govuk_template by default. Override it by changing gem 'govuk_template', '0.23.0' to gem 'govuk_template', :path => '../govuk_template' in your Gemfile

3. Change govuk_template

Some (but not all?) static templates extend the govuk_template which is shared across government. It will eventually be replaced by the new design system.

1. https://github.com/alphagov/govuk_template
2. The source files aren't used directly, so you need to run the build task after every change bundle exec rake
3. The template is cross compiled into a million different template languages, so you may need to change build_tools/compiler/*_processer.rb files to keep things in sync
4. don't forget to keep running bundle exec rake