In Fuchsia, components are the basic unit of executable software. When a Fuchsia device or emulator is booted and displays the $ prompt in the shell, you can run components.
To try running an example component on your Fuchsia device, see Run an example component.
Device commands in Fuchsia use the command dm. For example, to get a list of device commands, use the following command:
dm help
To reboot Fuchsia, use the following command:
dm reboot
See Connect to a target shell for more information on connecting to your Fuchsia device or emulator.
FIDL (Fuchsia Interface Definition Language) is the Interprocess Communication (IPC) system for Fuchsia. For an example of writing FIDL APIs and client and server components, review the FIDL tutorials.
You can also read the FIDL concepts doc to get a brief overview of what FIDL is, including its design goals, requirements, and workflows.
To test Fuchsia on your device, see Run Fuchsia tests.
Most graphical components in Fuchsia use the Scenic system compositor. You can launch such components (commonly found in /system/apps) using the present_view command, for example:
present_view fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/spinning_square_view#meta/spinning_square_view.cmx
See Scenic example apps.
If you launch a component that uses Scenic or hardware-accelerated graphics, Fuchsia enters the graphics mode, which doesn't display the shell. To use the shell, press Alt+Escape to enter the console mode. In the console mode, Alt+Tab has the same behavior described in Select a tab. Press Alt+Escape again to return to the graphics mode.
To submit your contribution to Fuchsia, see Contribute changes.