Struggling to open existing ionic project I cloned from GitHub and understand .iceproj vs ionic.project files

Question

I cloned a ionic project from github and am unable to get it running. When trying to run from command line with an ionic serve command, I get this error saying a ionic.project file is not found. Here is what my project directory looks like. I see no ionic.project file but I do have .iceproj file. Could the ionic.project file be something that was ignored on commit or is it something I need to add?

Alternatively, I was able to create a new ionic project from the command line and end up with a ionic.project file. Here is a screenshot of the directory When starting this new ionic project by following these instructions, I able to serve up the sample application and preview it in a browser no problem.

Does the project directory I cloned from github look correct? If so, how can I run this project?

Answer 1

Your cloned project from github seems to be only the www content of a ionic project.

Then :

• start a new project from cli
• copy content of cloned dir to www dir
• start ionic with ionic serve

Answer 2

1. You can use Microsoft Visual Studio Code https://code.visualstudio.com
2. Download NodeJs https://nodejs.org/en/download/
3. Download git (or any kind) https://git-scm.com/downloads 36 3.1 Optional -> reboot your computer
4. Open ‘git bash’ and run:
5. npm i -g ionic cordova This will install ionic and cordova on your computer
6. Navigate to your project folder in the git cli, then run: npm i This will install all the dependencies.
7. Run your ‘app’ (in git cli agian) with: ionic serve

When done compiling your browser will open, if not, open it yourself and navigate to the url displayed in the console output

This is kind of the basic steps to start developing with the Ionic framework (for existing project). Your project may use other dependencies etc. That’s up to you to fix.