Benjamin Lu

everyday is cool

Writing a Setup Guide from a Clean Checkout

Retrospective web development exercise for the 2020 archive.

A setup guide is easiest to test when you follow it in a new directory. Check out the project, install its dependencies, and run the first command the guide gives you. Write down anything you had to remember from outside the instructions.

Stop after getting one page to load. Check that the page is actually coming from the new checkout by changing a visible line there and reloading. That one check catches cases where an older copy of the project was already running on the same port. Update the guide with the missing steps while they’re still fresh.