Brain dump from new contributors to the platform

[LukeTowers]

Thoughts from @IsaiahPaget:

• The fact that you have to commit the compiled assets. (It’s not yet obvious to me why there is not a php artisan winter:init command of some sorts (Potential feature?))
• How do the rest of the maintainers get around this issue where you have these settings tracked in the repo, after running npm i, composer install, php artisan mix:install, php artisan winter:install, php artisan winter:env, php artisan winter:mirror public --relative: I get this in my tracked changes.

=> git status
On branch develop
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/develop'.

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
        modified:   config/app.php
        modified:   config/database.php
        modified:   config/mail.php
        modified:   modules/backend/assets/css/winter.css
        modified:   modules/backend/assets/less/layout/layout.less
        modified:   modules/system/traits/AssetMaker.php

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

• I was hoping to find a tutorial similar to the twitter clone on the Laravel site. Maybe something like that could go /blog/category/tutorials of the winter site
• Is there or would it be a welcome change to make a composer run dev feature like how it works in Laravel, such that when you change the asset files, like js, less, etc it automatically compiles, does that already exist? I see there is a mix:watch and vite:watch, but no single command that runs the server at the same time

[bennothommo]

The fact that you have to commit the compiled assets. (It’s not yet obvious to me why there is not a php artisan winter:init command of some sorts (Potential feature?))

Nature of the beast when we're working with Node but building the assets for people without Node access, unfortunately. We could perhaps have a command that installs the dependencies based on which OS you're on, but that presumes you have full access in the environment, so it'd be only suitable for devs.

How do the rest of the maintainers get around this issue where you have these settings tracked in the repo, after running npm i, composer install, php artisan mix:install, php artisan winter:install, php artisan winter:env, php artisan winter:mirror public --relative: I get this in my tracked changes.

That's usually just luck of the draw if your checked out copy is slightly behind (or ahead) of the subplits. Running git reset --hard puts it back in order.

Is there or would it be a welcome change to make a composer run dev feature like how it works in Laravel, such that when you change the asset files, like js, less, etc it automatically compiles, does that already exist? I see there is a mix:watch and vite:watch, but no single command that runs the server at the same time

I've never run both dev servers together - it's been one or the other, but theoretically you could use the Symony Process library to run both and stream the logs together.

[IsaiahPaget]

Another thought:

• A lot of the documentation focuses heavily on the code which is definitely good, but I think for new comers it would be very useful to have documentation on how to operate in the backend UI, for example: "how to create a new page", "how to use components on those pages", "for x plugin, this is how you enable this feature in the backend" with screenshots and such. Like I mentioned above, having a tutorial that goes shows the workflow of a dev who would be working on a greenfield project as a quick start guide would be hugely helpful people to onboard.