Contributing to Turbo

Thanks for your interest in contributing to Turbo!

Important note: At the moment, Turbo is made up of two tools, Turborepo and Turbopack, built with different languages and toolchains. In the future, Turbo will become a single toolchain built on Rust and the Turbo engine. In the meantime, please follow the respective guide when contributing to each tool:

Contributing to Turbo

Contributing to Turborepo

Building Turborepo

Dependencies

Install turborepo crate build requirements
Run pnpm install at root

Building

Building turbo CLI: In cli run make turbo
Using turbo to build turbo CLI: ./turbow.js

TLS Implementation

Turborepo uses reqwest, a Rust HTTP client, to make requests to the Turbo API. reqwest supports two TLS implementations: rustls and native-tls. rustls is a pure Rust implementation of TLS, while native-tls is a wrapper around OpenSSL. Turborepo allows users to select which implementation they want with the native-tls and rustls-tls features. By default, the native-tls feature is selected---this is done so that cargo build works out of the box. If you wish to select rustls-tls, you may do so by passing --no-default-features --features rustls-tls to the build command. This allows for us to build for more platforms, as native-tls is not supported everywhere.

Running Turborepo Tests

Dependencies

Install jq, sponge, and zstd

On macOS: brew install sponge jq zstd

Go Tests

From the root directory, you can

run unit tests with pnpm run --filter=cli test
run integration tests with pnpm run --filter=cli integration-tests
run e2e tests with pnpm run --filter=cli e2e

To run a single Go test, you can run go test ./[path/to/package/]. See more in the Go docs.

Rust Tests

The recommended way to run tests is: cargo nextest run -p turborepo-lib --features rustls-tls. You'll have to install it first.

You can also use the built in cargo test directly cargo test -p turborepo-lib.

Debugging Turborepo

Install go install github.com/go-delve/delve/cmd/dlv@latest
In VS Code's "Run and Debug" tab, select Build Basic to start debugging the initial launch of turbo against the build target of the Basic Example. This task is configured in launch.json.

Benchmarking Turborepo

Build Turborepo as described above
From the benchmark/ directory, run pnpm run benchmark.

Updating `turbo`

You might need to update packages/turbo in order to support a new platform. When you do that you will need to link the module in order to be able to continue working. As an example, with npm link:

cd ~/repos/vercel/turbo/packages/turbo
npm link

# Run your build, e.g. `go build ./cmd/turbo` if you're on the platform you're adding.
cd ~/repos/vercel/turbo/cli
go build ./cmd/turbo

# You can then run the basic example specifying the build asset path.
cd ~/repos/vercel/turbo/examples/basic
TURBO_BINARY_PATH=~/repos/vercel/turbo/cli/turbo.exe npm install
TURBO_BINARY_PATH=~/repos/vercel/turbo/cli/turbo.exe npm link turbo

If you're using a different package manager replace npm accordingly.

Manually testing `turbo`

Before releasing, it's recommended to test the turbo binary manually. Here's a checklist of testing strategies to cover:

Test login, logout, login --sso-team, link, unlink
Test prune (Note turbo here is the unreleased turbo binary)
- npx create-turbo --use-pnpm prune-test && cd prune-test
- turbo --skip-infer prune --scope=docs && cd out && pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
- turbo --skip-infer build
Test --dry-run and --graph.
Test with and without daemon.

There are also multiple installation scenarios worth testing:

Global-only. turbo is installed as global binary, no local turbo in repository.
Local-only. turbo is installed as local binary, no global turbo in PATH. turbo` is invoked via a root package script.
Global + local. turbo is installed as global binary, and local turbo in repository. Global turbo delegates to local turbo

Here are a few repositories that you can test on:

next.js
tldraw
tailwindcss
vercel

These lists are by no means exhaustive. Feel free to add to them with other strategies.

Publishing `turbo` to the npm registry

See the publishing guide.

Adding A New Crate

When adding a new crate to the repo, it is essential that it is included/excluded from the relevant workflows. This ensures that changes to the crate are tested by the correct workflows, but that they do not trigger unnecessary workflows as well.

First, determine whether the crate is for Turbopack or Turborepo. If it is for Turbopack, then the crate should be added to the default-members key in the root Cargo.toml. If the crate is for Turborepo, the crate must be added to the PATTERNS list in "Turborepo related changes" section of the test.yml workflow file. It must also be excluded from the "Turbopack related changes" section of the test.yml workflow file.

For instance, if we were adding a turborepo-foo crate, we would add the following patterns:

      - name: Turbopack related changes
        id: turbopack
        uses: technote-space/get-diff-action@v6
        with:
          PATTERNS: |
            pnpm-lock.yaml
            package.json
            crates/**
            xtask/**
            .cargo/**
            rust-toolchain
            !crates/turborepo/**
            !crates/turborepo-lib/**
            !crates/turborepo-ffi/**
            !crates/turbo-updater/**
+           !crates/turborepo-foo/**
            !**.md
            !**.mdx

      - name: Turborepo related changes
        id: turborepo
        uses: technote-space/get-diff-action@v6
        with:
          PATTERNS: |
            pnpm-lock.yaml
            package.json
            crates/turborepo/**
            crates/turborepo-lib/**
            crates/turborepo-ffi/**
            crates/turbo-updater/**
+           crates/turborepo-foo/**
            .cargo/**
            rust-toolchain
            !**.md
            !**.mdx

The crate must also be explicitly excluded from build commands when building Turbopack. To do so, add a --exclude turbopack-foo flag to the build command. Search through test.yml and add this flag to all cargo commands that already exclude turborepo-lib.