SvelteKit Tooling: 7 Tools to Streamline your CI Workflow # SvelteKit Tooling: 7 Tools to Streamline your CI Workflow #

🖥 VS Code Extensions #

Since 70% of professional developers use Visual Studio Code , let’s have a quick look at some extensions you might want to add to your SvelteKit workflow before we get on to the main tooling items. Although the tools we look at later are mostly standalone tools, you will get additional benefits when working with VS Code if you add the corresponding extension. We will look at the dot files as we go along.

• ESLint   — working in conjunction with the main ESList package (see below), this will highlight errors in your code, often helping you realize early that you mistyped a variable name or forgot to import or install a package.
• Prettier   — prettier is probably the best known code formatter. Rather than argue over whether to use it, I think the argument has shifted to whether it should be used to enforce tab or space indenting — I'm not getting into that one!
• stylelint   — this will flag up accessibility as well as CSS code style issues in VS Code. I run stylelint before committing code, but it's nice to have errors highlighted in the editor, so you can fix them individually as they crop up. That is, rather than having to tackle a stack of them just before you commit at the end of a long session.
• SvelteCode   — official Svelte VS Code extension adds syntax highlighting for your Svelte code.

Base VS Code Configuration #

Everyone has their own favourite VS Code settings. Personally, I prefer a light-touch approach, so hopefully this might be used as a starting point for anyone. You can set these globally, though typically I add a config file to each project (at .vscode/settings in the project folder) so I can tweak settings based on what the project uses.

    
1 {
2   "editor.formatOnSave": true,
3   "editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
4     "source.organizeImports": true
5   },	
6   "[markdown]": {
7     "editor.wordWrap": "bounded",
8     "editor.wordWrapColumn": 80,
9     "editor.quickSuggestions": false
10   },
11   "[svelte]": {
12     "editor.defaultFormatter": "svelte.svelte-vscode"
13   }
14 }

  

formatOnSave is my most loved setting! I have mixed feelings about organizeImports and omit it on most projects — it can get a touch annoying when it removes imports which you still need. You can run organize imports manually using the Shift + Alt + O key combination. The markdown options make your content a little easier to read in the editor (you might prefer 100 or 120 character lines instead of 80). I have had a couple of Svelte projects where formatting stopped working, and found adding the last setting fixes this. As I say, this is just a base, and you will probably have your own favourites. I'm keen to hear what I am missing (remember I prefer a minimalist approach though)!

🔥 SvelteKit Tooling: 1. pnpm #

pnpm is a packet management tool like npm or yarn. I like to look at it as a more modern imagination of a package manager. The main selling points are speed and efficiency. When you install packages in your project, yarn and npm will download the package and save it to a node_modules folder in your project. These folders can get huge, and you have to scan though old projects, deleting them whenever your machine starts running low on free disk space. In contrast, pnpm creates a central repository for packages on your machine and just adds a link from the node_modules folder of your project to the particular package in the central repo.

The two main advantages of the central local repo approach (which pnpm follows) are that it is quicker to start up new projects, as many of the packages you need to install will already be on your machine. Then, on top, you save on disk space. In the screenshot below, you see in the last long line, 142 packages were reused in this particular case. That's 142 packages that did not need to be freshly downloaded. You will also see the output is a little more terse and cleanly formatted than with other tools.

You need a one-off installation to get pnpm running on your machine. After that, it accepts commands similar to the ones you will be using to with npm or yarn. If you already have npm on your machine, just run this command to install pnpm globally:

    
npm i -g pnpm

  

To check for updates for pnpm and other global packages, run:

    
pnpm outdated -g
pnpm add -g outdated-package-one outdated-package-two

  

🧑🏽 SvelteKit Tooling: 2. Prettier #

You can automatically add prettier to a new skeleton Svelte project from the init tool:

    
pnpm dlx sv create sveltekit-tooling && cd $_

  

The default prettier script installed into package.json uses the .gitignore file to decide which files to ignore for formatting. I like to commit the pnpm-lock.yaml file but am not too bothered about how it is formatted, so go update the script and add a .prettierignore file to my project root folder:

    
1 .svelte-kit/**
2 static/**
3 build/**
4 functions/**
5 node_modules/**
6 pnpm-lock.yaml

  

    
1 {
2   "name": "sveltekit-tooling",
3   "version": "0.0.1",
4   "scripts": {
5     "dev": "svelte-kit dev",
6     "build": "svelte-kit build",
7     "preview": "svelte-kit preview",
8     "format": "prettier --write --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte .",
9     "prettier:check": "prettier --check --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte .",
10     "lint": "prettier --check --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte . && eslint --ignore-path .gitignore .",
11   },

  

Notice I add a prettier:check script too! I use this for a final check before committing, even though I set formatOnSave in VS Code.

If you prefer tabs to spaces, ignore the rest of this paragraph! By the way I’m not saying spaces are better than tabs, just letting you know how to switch if you don’t want to go with the default, just saying! Here's my .prettierrc file:

    
1 {
2   "useTabs": true,
3   "arrowParens": "always",
4   "singleQuote": true,
5   "trailingComma": "all",
6   "printWidth": 100
7 }

  

We use default filenames here for the ignore and config file, so we don’t need to specify them explicitly in the scripts.

For completeness, here is a typical .gitignore file for one of my SvelteKit projects:

    
1 # SvelteKit Files
2 build/
3 functions/
4 /.svelte-kit
5  
6 # Dependency directories
7 node_modules/
8 /package
9  
10 # Optional eslint cache
11 .eslintcache
12  
13 # dotenv environment variable files
14 .env*
15 !.env.EXAMPLE
16  
17 # Mac files
18 .DS_Store
19  
20 # Local Netlify folder
21 .netlify

  

While we're slightly off-topic and since this does not fit neatly anywhere else, it is worth adding a .nvmrc file to new SvelteKit projects. This sets the node version when your host builds the project. Not setting it can result in builds failing, as some hosts use an older node version by default.

    
1 16

  

👀 SvelteKit Tooling: 3. ESLint #

ESLint is a well-know JavaScript linting tool. There are various rules you can set, though the defaults set by the Svelte init tool do work quite well. If you have set up your project using another method, you can run the ESLint setup tool to get you going:

    
pnpm add -D eslint
./node_modules/.bin/eslint --init

  

Here is the .eslint.cjs file that I go with (default for JavaScript skeleton project from init tool):

    
1 module.exports = {
2 	root: true,
3 	extends: ['eslint:recommended', 'prettier'],
4 	plugins: ['svelte3'],
5 	overrides: [{ files: ['*.svelte'], processor: 'svelte3/svelte3' }],
6 	parserOptions: {
7 		sourceType: 'module',
8 		ecmaVersion: 2019
9 	},
10 	env: {
11 		browser: true,
12 		es2017: true,
13 		node: true
14 	}
15 };

  

Here's the lint package.json script I typically use:

    
1 {
2   "name": "sveltekit-tooling",
3   "version": "0.0.1",
4   "scripts": {
5     "dev": "svelte-kit dev",
6     "build": "svelte-kit build",
7     "preview": "svelte-kit preview",
8     "format": "prettier --write --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte .",
9     "prettier:check": "prettier --check --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte .",
10     "lint": "prettier --check --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte . && eslint --ignore-path .gitignore .",
11   },

  

😇 SvelteKit Tooling: 4. svelte‑check #

svelte-check   is a handy tool for finding TypeScript errors in your code, though I also like to use it on JavaScript projects. You might find it spits out a lot of errors. If you are just starting out, you will not understand all of them or know which ones are safe to ignore. In this case, if your code works, just fix the accessibility errors and tackle the others one by one as you gain more experience.

Anyway, to set it up, run:

    
pnpm add -D svelte-check

  

Then add a script to package.json to run it when you need to:

    
1 {
2   "name": "sveltekit-tooling",
3   "version": "0.0.1",
4   "scripts": {
5     "dev": "svelte-kit dev",
6     "build": "svelte-kit build",
7     "preview": "svelte-kit preview",
8     "format": "prettier --write --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte .",
9     "prettier:check": "prettier --check --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte .",
10     "lint": "prettier --ignore-path .gitignore --check --plugin=prettier-plugin-svelte . && eslint --ignore-path .gitignore .",
11     "svelte:check": "svelte-check --fail-on-warnings",
12   },

  

You can set a stricter --fail-on-hints flag as an alternative.

💄 SvelteKit Tooling: 5. stylelint #

stylelint is great for checking accessibility issues in your CSS code. You can also use it to prevent colour drift and to keep your code more maintainable. As an example, setting a rule for no named colours will flag up an error if add something like border-color: red for debugging and forget to remove it. More likely though, you might set a hex or HSL value, while fixing or setting something up instead of using a named variable like --theme-colour. When you later need to tweak the theme colour, the manually added hex value will persist, creating inconsistencies in the site.

stylelint is one way to fix this problem. Another, if you're a TypeScript fan, is to be super strict and use vanilla-extract with contracts. For stylelint there’s a dedicated video on vanilla CSS linting in SvelteKit. Also follow that link for another video which looks at SCSS linting in SvelteKit.

I add this script to package.json for vanilla CSS projects:

    
	"lint:css": "stylelint "src/**/*.{css,svelte}"",

  

this is the SCSS alternative:

    
	"lint:scss": "stylelint "src/**/*.{css,scss,svelte}"",

  

⛔️ SvelteKit Tooling: 6. precommit #

When working in a team, your colleagues will probably appreciate consistent and concise commit messages. There is a whole system for commit message etiquette named conventional commits . That is just one option, and you might prefer one of the other various options. With conventional commits, your commit messages take a particular format. In this example our commit type is refactor (we could also choose fix, style or feature among others).

    
refactor(services/narcissus-api): 🏄🏽‍♂️ add Supabase client

  

Following the type of commit in brackets, we have a description for the part of the project affected. Then the commit message itself. The emoji is not required! If you want to try out conventional commits, you might like the commitizen command line tool . As well as holding your hand as you write commit messages, it can handle version bumping and generate changelogs for you. We won't go into details here, but definitely try it on a new side project to see if it suits you.

I like to include the commitlint tool in all my SvelteKit projects to enforce the conventional commit syntax. If you want to try it, install a couple of packages and then add the config file:

    
pnpm add -g commitlint
pnpm add -D @commitlint/config-conventional

  

Next, create a commitlint.config.cjs file in your project's root folder:

    
module.exports = { extends: ['@commitlint/config-conventional'] };

  

Because SvelteKit uses ES modules by default, it is important that the file extension is .cjs rather than .js.

To test it out, run a command from the Terminal like:

    
echo 'nonsense non-valid commit message' | pnpm exec commitlint

  

This is asking commitlint to consider nonsense non-valid commit message to be a commit message and to check it for us.

We will see how to integrate commitlint into the continuous integration process next.

🏋🏽 SvelteKit Tooling: 7. Husky #

Husky pulls together a few of the other tools we have already seen. Essentially, it runs git hooks locally, before committing your code. If you have ever pushed code to an upstream repo only to realize you forgot to format it or didn't save a file with an error in it before committing Husky will have your back. So, as an example, you can make sure you pass svelte-check and a host of other things before pushing to your remote repo. Here's my setup, but you can go to town and add a lot more.

To get going, install Husky as a dev dependency:

    
pnpm add -D husky

  

Next, you can add config files to run at different stages in the continuous integration process:

    
pnpm exec commitlint --edit "$1"

  

    
pnpm prettier:check && pnpm run lint:css
#pnpm prettier:check && pnpm run lint:scss # scss alternative

  

    
pnpm svelte:check

  

Finally, install your Husky configuration:

    
pnpm exec husky install

  

🙌🏽 SvelteKit Tooling: What we Learned #

In this post we looked at:

• how tooling can be used to streamline the continuous integration process;
• configuration of seven continuous integration tools to work with SvelteKit; and
• how Husky can be used ultimately to enforce all the coding conventions and rules created by other tools.

I do hope there is at least one thing in this article which you can use in your work or a side project. I'm keen to hear what tools you use in your own process and any further recommendations you might have. Drop a comment below with your thoughts.

You can see an example project with all of this set up on the Rodney Lab Git Hub repo .

🏁 SvelteKit Tooling: Summary #

What Svelte tooling is available? #

Continuous integration tooling can be used to make updating and maintaining your Svelte code base less of a chore. It also brings benefits of code consistency by enforcing rules you choose. We look at how you can set up VS Code, pnpm, Prettier, ESLint, svelte-check, stylelint, precommit and Husky in your SvelteKit project.

How can you streamline your continuous integration process working in SvelteKit? #

The biggest advantages might be gained from adding svelte-check and stylelint to your Svelte project. These will point out some common accessibility issues which might exist in your code. Husky can be used to make sure code is not pushed to your repo whenever those tools identify issues.

How can you configure Husky and commitlint to work with SvelteKit? #

SvelteKit uses ES modules by default, which means you will need to tweak configuration files for commitlint and some other continuous integration tooling for it to work with SvelteKit. Typically, you will have to use a .cjs config file instead of a .js one.

🙏🏽 SvelteKit Tooling: Feedback #

Have you found the post useful? Would you prefer to see posts on another topic instead? Get in touch with ideas for new posts. Also, if you like my writing style, get in touch if I can write some posts for your company site on a consultancy basis. Read on to find ways to get in touch, further below. If you want to support posts similar to this one and can spare a few dollars, euros or pounds, please consider supporting me through Buy me a Coffee.

Rodney

@askRodney

🏋🏽how you can use Husky and 6 other continuous integration tools to level up your ❤️ Svelte CI workflow.

Also see how to configure the tools to work with ES Modules used by SvelteKit.

Hope you find it useful!

https://t.co/aiCobHq7QB #askRodney #sveltekit @typicode @sveltejs

— Rodney (@askRodney) November 17, 2021

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