Storybook: docs: what are the differences between `main.js`, `preview.js`, `manager.js`?

[lidoravitan]

Issue

Can't find any documentation about what the difference between main.js, preview.js, manager.js.
when should I use/choose each one? what are their lifecycle (I mean do they load before/after the env)?

[shilman]

@lidoravitan can you review this PR and add questions as comments there?

[lidoravitan]

@shilman sure I'm on it! thanks for response

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[goepi]

What are after all the differences between all these different files???

It's nowhere to be found in the docs. Take "Using addons" for example; the docs say to add something to main.js, then later in a section entitled "global configuration" it says "To do that, you can add your decorators to a config file, typically in .storybook/preview.js.", but nowhere is it explained what "typically" even means.

I don't know what I should put in preview.js vs main.js

[shilman]

cc @ndelangen

[ndelangen]

Here's where it's explained, but it's missing in the docs for some reason:
https://github.com/storybookjs/storybook/blob/next/docs/src/pages/configurations/overview/index.md

[ndelangen]

@shilman do we deploy the docs for next somewhere somehow?

[shilman]

@ndelangen No because of the whole "frontpage" / "docs" split. I think we need to patch that into master. It came in on this PR, but didn't have the patch label:

https://github.com/storybookjs/storybook/pull/9552

I'll do the patch now. Thanks!

[sme3x]

You have it all nicely explained here by @shilman - Migration docs