npm start support all locale

Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines on issues.

Description

When working at a multilingual docusaurus project, I always switch between npm start and npm start --locale zh-cn.

Could the user just run npm start and let localeDropdown works normally?

Has this been requested on Canny?

No

Motivation

Currently, npm start doesn’t work for multi language site. npm run is not a full-version preview.

Could the user just run npm start and let localeDropdown works normally?

API design

No response

Have you tried building it?

No response

Self-service

• I’d be willing to contribute this feature to Docusaurus myself.

[Josh-Cena]

If it’s important for you to preview both locales at the same time, I suggest you use yarn start for your primary locale, and yarn start --port 3001 --locale zh-Hans for your second locale. You won’t get to use the locale dropdown, but at least you can compare them side-by-side.

Update: both locales will try to write generated files to the same directory, so if you are starting two locales in parallel, you have to change the generated directory of one locale, for example: cross-env DOCUSAURUS_GENERATED_FILES_DIR_NAME=.docusaurus/zh-Hans yarn start --locale zh-Hans --port 3001

[Josh-Cena]

cross-env is an npm package. In practice, if you are using Unix, you may not install it. I’m only adding this because setting environment variables on Windows is tricky. The main idea is you need to set the DOCUSAURUS_GENERATED_FILES_DIR environment variable.