In the spirit of open source software development, jQuery always encourages community code contribution. To help you get started and before you jump into writing code, be sure to read these important contribution guidelines thoroughly:

1. Getting Involved
2. Core Style Guide
3. Tips For Bug Patching

In order to build jQuery, you need to have GNU make 3.8 or later, Node.js/npm latest, and git 1.7 or later. (Earlier versions might work OK, but are not tested.)

Windows users have two options:

1. Install msysgit (Full installer for official Git), GNU make for Windows, and a binary version of Node.js. Make sure all three packages are installed to the same location (by default, this is C:\Program Files\Git).
2. Install Cygwin (make sure you install the git, make, and which packages), then either follow the Node.js build instructions or install the binary version of Node.js.

Mac OS users should install Xcode (comes on your Mac OS install DVD, or downloadable from Apple's Xcode site) and http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/. Once Homebrew is installed, run brew install git to install git, and brew install node to install Node.js.

Linux/BSD users should use their appropriate package managers to install make, git, and node, or build from source if you swing that way. Easy-peasy.

First, clone a copy of the main jQuery git repo by running:

git clone git://github.com/jquery/jquery.git

Enter the directory and install the node dependencies:

cd jquery && npm install

Make sure you have grunt installed by testing:

grunt -version

Then, to get a complete, minified (w/ Uglify.js), linted (w/ JSHint) version of jQuery, type the following:

grunt

The built version of jQuery will be put in the dist/ subdirectory.

Starting in jQuery 1.8, special builds can now be created that optionally exlude or include any of the following modules:

• dimensions
• effects
• offset

To create a custom build, use the following special grunt commands:

Exclude dimensions:

grunt build:*:*:-dimensions

Exclude effects:

grunt build:*:*:-effects

Exclude offset:

grunt build:*:*:-offset

Exclude all optional modules:

grunt build:*:*:-dimensions:-effects:-offset

Start grunt to auto-build jQuery as you work:

cd jquery && grunt watch

Run the unit tests with a local server that supports PHP. No database is required. Pre-configured php local servers are available for Windows and Mac. Here are some options:

• Windows: WAMP download
• Mac: MAMP download
• Linux: Setting up LAMP
• Mongoose (most platforms)

If you want to build jQuery to a directory that is different from the default location:

grunt && grunt dist:/path/to/special/location/

With this example, the output files would be:

/path/to/special/location/jquery.js
/path/to/special/location/jquery.min.js

If you want to add a permanent copy destination, create a file in dist/ called ".destination.json". Inside the file, paste and customize the following:

{
  "/Absolute/path/to/other/destination": true
}

Additionally, both methods can be combined.

Update the submodules to what is probably the latest upstream code.

grunt submodules

Note: This task will also be run any time the default grunt command is used.

As the source code is handled by the version control system Git, it's useful to know some features used.

The repository uses submodules, which normally are handled directly by the Makefile, but sometimes you want to be able to work with them manually.

Following are the steps to manually get the submodules:

git clone https://github.com/jquery/jquery.git
git submodule init
git submodule update

Or:

git clone https://github.com/jquery/jquery.git
git submodule update --init

Or:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/jquery/jquery.git

If you want to work inside a submodule, it is possible, but first you need to checkout a branch:

cd src/sizzle
git checkout master

After you've committed your changes to the submodule, you'll update the jquery project to point to the new commit, but remember to push the submodule changes before pushing the new jquery commit:

cd sr