update READMEs, CONTRIBUTING, and package.jsons

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -1,6 +1,54 @@
-# Contributing
+Contributing
+===
 
-## Getting started
+Want to contribute to PouchDB Server? Great, you've come to the right place!
+This document contains everything you need to know to get started building,
+testing, and publishing the code.
+
+Monorepo
+---
+
+PouchDB Server is a monorepo, containing the packages `pouchdb-server` and `express-pouchdb`. It follows the same format as the [PouchDB monorepo](https://github.com/pouchdb/pouchdb), using the [alle](https://github.com/boennemann/alle) monorepo setup. You can read more about monorepos [here](https://github.com/babel/babel/blob/master/doc/design/monorepo.md) and [here](https://gist.github.com/nolanlawson/457cdb309c9ec5b39f0d420266a9faa4).
+
+Conceptually `pouchdb-server` is a standalone CouchDB-esque server, whereas
+`express-pouchdb` is designed to be injectable into an existing Express app.
+`pouchdb-server` uses `express-pouchdb` under the hood.
+
+Testing
+---
+
+One of the primary benefits of **pouchdb-server** is the ability to run PouchDB's Node test suite against itself. To do that, you can simply,
+
+```bash
+$ npm run test-pouchdb
+```
+
+Whatever args you provide as `SERVER_ARGS` will be passed to `pouchdb-server` itself:
+
+```bash
+$ SERVER_ARGS='--in-memory' npm run test-pouchdb
+```
+
+Or to test in Firefox (IndexedDB):
+
+```bash
+$ CLIENT=selenium:firefox npm run test-pouchdb
+```
+
+Or to test in PhantomJS (WebSQL):
+
+```bash
+$ CLIENT=selenium:phantomjs ES5_SHIM=true npm run test-pouchdb
+```
+
+Additionally, we've started porting CouchDB's JavaScript test harness to
+[a simple Node module](https://github.com/nick-thompson/couchdb-harness), which can be run against PouchDB via **pouchdb-server**.
+
+```bash
+$ npm run test-couchdb
+```
+
+## Submitting a pull request
 
 Want to help me make this thing awesome? Great! Here's how you should get started.
 
@@ -12,10 +60,12 @@ Want to help me make this thing awesome? Great! Here's how you should get starte
 
 ## Release process
 
-`pouchdb-server` is a monorepo, meaning that when you publish, you need to publish all packages simultaneously. Versions are kept in sync for simplicity's sake.
+`pouchdb-server` is a monorepo, meaning that when you publish, you need to publish all packages simultaneously. Versions are kept in sync across packages, for simplicity's sake.
 
 Release process:
 
 1. `npm version patch | minor | major` to change the version in the top-level `package.json`, which will apply to all packages in the release script
 2. `git push origin master --tags`
-3. `npm run release`
+3. `npm run release`
+
+This will search through all the sub-packages and automatically figure out the correct `dependencies` and `optionalDependencies`. To add a new dependency, just add it to the top-level `package.json` and it will be identified at release time.