How can I contribute?

Note

Except where otherwise indicated in a given source file, all original contributions to AAutils are licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) or any later version.

By contributing you agree with: a) our code of conduct; b) that these contributions are your own (or approved by your employer), and c) you grant a full, complete, irrevocable copyright license to all users and developers of the AAutils project, present and future, pursuant to the license of the project.

Report a bug

If AAutils crashes on you, or if one of the AAutils “tests” fail, congratulations, you may have just found a bug. And If you have precise steps to reproduce, awesome! You’re on your way to reporting a useful bug report.

Don’t be afraid to report bugs, even if you’re not sure if they’re valid. The most that can happen is that we find out together that this is a feature instead!

AAutils is using GitHub’s issue tracking system for collecting and discussing issues. If you have a possible candidate, do not hesitate, share with us by creating a new issue.

Contribute with code

AAutils uses GitHub and its pull request development model. You can find a primer on how to use GitHub pull requests here.

Every Pull Request you send will be automatically tested by the CI system and review will take place in the Pull Request as well.

Git workflow

  • Fork the repository in GitHub.

  • Clone from your fork:

    $ git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:<username>/AAutils.git

Note

The --recurse-submodules option is used to checkout the contents from the avocado-static-checks repository, which is not needed for general AAutils installations, but which is very important for development purposes.

  • Enter the directory:

    $ cd AAutils

  • Create a remote, pointing to the upstream:

    $ git remote add upstream git@github.com:avocado-framework/aautils.git

  • Configure your name and e-mail in git:

    $ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email email@foo.bar

  • Golden tip: never work on local branch main. Instead, create a new local branch and checkout to it:

    $ git checkout -b my_new_local_branch

  • Code and then commit your changes:

    $ git add new-file.py
$ git commit -s
# or "git commit -as" to commit all changes

See also

Please, read our Style guides.

  • Make sure your code is working (install your version of AAutils, test your change to make sure you didn’t introduce any regressions).

  • Rebase your local branch on top of upstream main:

    $ git fetch
$ git rebase upstream/main
(resolve merge conflicts, if any)

  • Push your commit(s) to your fork:

    $ git push origin my_new_local_branch

  • Create the Pull Request on GitHub. Add the relevant information to the Pull Request description.

  • Ask maintainers of utility which you are changing for a review. You will find the list of maintainers in the metadata.yaml <https://github.com/avocado-framework/aautils/tree/main/metadata>_ file.

  • Check if your Pull Request passes the CI system. Your Pull Request will probably be ignored until it’s all green.

Now you’re waiting for feedback on GitHub Pull Request page. Once you get some, join the discussion, answer the questions, make clear if you’re going to change the code based on some review and, if not, why. Feel free to disagree with the reviewer, they probably have different use cases and opinions, which is expected. Try describing yours and suggest other solutions, if necessary.

Then, proceed to make the changes. This is a typical workflow:

  • Code, and amend the commit(s) and/or create new commits. If you have more than one commit in the PR, you will probably need to rebase interactively to amend the right commits. git cola or git citool can be handy here.

  • Rebase your local branch on top of upstream main:

    $ git fetch
$ git rebase upstream/main
(resolve merge conflicts, if any)

  • Push your changes:

    $ git push --force origin my_new_local_branch

Please communicate to the reviewers what the summary of changes are. Also, make use of GitHub’s features to ease the reviewers’ life, such as marking comments as “resolved”. Reviewers should make use of GitHub’s “compare” feature to more easily verify the changes since the last iteration.

After your PR gets merged, you can sync the main branch on your local repository propagate the sync to the main branch in your fork repository on GitHub:

$ git checkout main
$ git pull upstream main
$ git push

From time to time, you can remove old branches to avoid pollution:

# To list branches along with time reference:
$ git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate:iso8601' --format=' %(authordate:iso8601)%09%(refname)' refs/heads
# To remove branches from your fork repository:
$ git push origin :my_old_branch

Code Review

Every single Pull Request in AAutils has to be reviewed by at least one maintainer. All maintainers have permission to merge a Pull Request, but some conditions have to be fulfilled before merging the code:

  • Pull Request has to pass the CI tests.

  • One ‘Approved’ code review should be given.

  • No explicit disapproval should be present.

Pull Requests failing in CI will not be merged, and reviews won’t be given to them until all the problems are sorted out. In case of a weird failure, or false-negative (eg. due to too many commits in a single PR), please reach the maintainers by @name/email or other means.