2. Contributing

Welcome to ats-linter contributor’s guide.

This document focuses on getting any potential contributor familiarized with the development processes, but other kinds of contributions are also appreciated.

If you are new to using git or have never collaborated in a project previously, please have a look at contribution-guide.org. Other resources are also listed in the excellent guide created by FreeCodeCamp [1].

Please notice, all users and contributors are expected to be open, considerate, reasonable, and respectful. When in doubt, Python Software Foundation’s Code of Conduct is a good reference in terms of behavior guidelines.

2.1. Issue Reports

If you experience bugs or general issues with ats-linter, please have a look on the issue tracker. If you don’t see anything useful there, please feel free to fire an issue report.

Tip

Please don’t forget to include the closed issues in your search. Sometimes a solution was already reported, and the problem is considered solved.

New issue reports should include information about your programming environment (e.g., operating system, Python version) and steps to reproduce the problem. Please try also to simplify the reproduction steps to a very minimal example that still illustrates the problem you are facing. By removing other factors, you help us to identify the root cause of the issue.

2.2. Documentation Improvements

You can help improve ats-linter docs by making them more readable and coherent, or by adding missing information and correcting mistakes.

ats-linter documentation uses Sphinx as its main documentation compiler. This means that the docs are kept in the same repository as the project code, and that any documentation update is done in the same way was a code contribution.

Tip

markup language used:

reStructuredText

Tip

Please notice that the GitHub web interface provides a quick way of propose changes in ats-linter’s files. While this mechanism can be tricky for normal code contributions, it works perfectly fine for contributing to the docs, and can be quite handy.

If you are interested in trying this method out, please navigate to the docs folder in the source repository, find which file you would like to propose changes and click in the little pencil icon at the top, to open GitHub’s code editor. Once you finish editing the file, please write a message in the form at the bottom of the page describing which changes have you made and what are the motivations behind them and submit your proposal.

When working on documentation changes in your local machine, you can compile them using tox:

tox -e docs

and use Python’s built-in web server for a preview in your web browser (http://localhost:8000):

python3 -m http.server --directory 'docs/_build/html'

2.3. Code Contributions

Objects shall be implemented with facade pattern, so that the user can use the same interface to interact with different objects.

2.3.1. Submit an issue

Before you work on any non-trivial code contribution it’s best to first create a report in the issue tracker to start a discussion on the subject. This often provides additional considerations and avoids unnecessary work.

2.3.2. Create an environment

1. Before you start coding we recommend to install Miniconda_Linux or Miniconda_Windows which allows to setup a dedicated development environment. For installation of Miniconda, get the Linux or Windows installer for python latests 64-bit from Miniconda then:

   bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
   

   or for Windows just double-click the .exe file and follow the instructions on the screen. For fast installation on linux use these commands, for more info check miniconda installation guide:

   curl 'https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh' > Miniconda.sh
   bash Miniconda.sh
   

   and follow the wizard and update conda at the end:

   conda update conda
   

2. Now you have a base miniconda environment on your terminal which can be used to create other dev-environments.

3. Remove auto_activate_base and report_errors for your terminal:

   conda config --set auto_activate_base false
   conda config --set report_errors false
   

4. Add and set default conda channel all-conda from artifactory:

   conda config --set channel_alias https://artifactory.se.axis.com/artifactory/api/conda
   conda config --add channels all-conda
   conda config --add default_channels https://artifactory.se.axis.com/artifactory/api/conda/all-conda
   

5. To make sure all installation for pip installs from axis artifactory:

   pip config set global.index-url https://artifacts.se.axis.com/artifactory/api/pypi/all-pypi/simple
   

6. Create an environment with the name ats-linter-dev. We use the defined configuration file dev_env.yml at project’s conda_envs:

   conda env create -f conda_envs/dev_env.yml
   

   This list shall be always updated by new packages which the project needed.

7. Now activate the isolated environment:

   conda activate ats-linter-dev
   

8. Verify that the environment was installed correctly:

   conda env list
   

   or use conda info --envs

9. For installing new package:

   conda install -c conda-forge <name of the package>
   

Note

If you already have Miniconda or anaconda installed, and you just want to upgrade, you should not use the installer. Just use conda update conda.

1. For updating entire conda environment, deactivate then update as follow:

   conda deactivate
   conda env update ats-linter-dev --file conda_envs/dev_env.yml
   conda update -n ats-linter-dev --all
   

   Then you can activate and work with environment as before.

2. You can remove the specified environment by this and start a fresh one to continue:

   conda remove -p $HOME/miniconda3/envs/ats-linter-env --all
   

3. Uninstalling miniconda for Linux:

   rm -rf ~/miniconda ~/.conda ~/.condarc ~/.continum
   

   for Windows go to add/remove program and find Python X.X(Miniconda) to remove.

2.3.3. Clone the repository

1. Create an user account on GitHub if you do not already have one.

2. Fork the project repository: click on the Fork button near the top of the page. This creates a copy of the code under your account on GitHub.

3. Clone this copy to your local disk:

   git clone git@github.com:YOURLOGIN/ats-linter.git
   cd ats-linter
   

4. You should run:

   pip install -U pip setuptools -e .
   

   to be able to import the package under development in the Python REPL.

5. Run pre-commit:

   tox -e lint
   

   ats-linter comes with a lot of hooks configured to automatically help the developer to check the code being written.

2.3.4. Implement your changes

1. Create a branch to hold your changes:

   git checkout -b my-feature
   

   and start making changes. Never work on the main branch!

2. Start your work on this branch. Don’t forget to add docstrings to new functions, modules and classes, especially if they are part of public APIs.

3. Add yourself to the list of contributors in AUTHORS.rst.

4. When you’re done editing, do:

   git add <MODIFIED FILES>
   git commit
   

   to record your changes in git.

   Please make sure to see the validation messages from pre-commit and fix any eventual issues. This should automatically use flake8/black to check/fix the code style in a way that is compatible with the project.

   Important

   Don’t forget to add unit tests and documentation in case your contribution adds an additional feature and is not just a bugfix.

   Moreover, writing a descriptive commit message is highly recommended. In case of doubt, you can check the commit history with:

   git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all
   

   to look for recurring communication patterns.

5. Please check that your changes don’t break any unit tests with:

   tox
   

   (inside the conda dev_env environment).

   You can also use tox to run several other pre-configured tasks in the repository. Try tox -av to see a list of the available checks.

2.3.5. Submit your contribution

1. If everything works fine, push your local branch to GitHub with:

   git push -u origin my-feature
   

2. Go to the web page of your fork and click “Create pull request” to send your changes for review.

3. Find more detailed information in creating a PR. You might also want to open the PR as a draft first and mark it as ready for review after the feedbacks from the continuous integration (CI) system or any required fixes.

2.4. Troubleshooting

The following tips can be used when facing problems to build or test the package:

1. Most of the troubles are environment issues which can be easily fix by cleaning and then try again. Clean up all folders with:

   tox -e clean
   

   then try again and see if you get errors or not.

Warning

Do not run project_cleaner.py script in another folder than project root, it may cause deleting important files on your system.

1. Pytest can drop you in an interactive session in the case an error occurs. In order to do that you need to pass a --pdb option (for example by running tox -- -k <NAME OF THE FALLING TEST> --pdb). You can also setup breakpoints manually instead of using the --pdb option.

2.5. Maintainer tasks

2.5.1. Releases

If you are part of the group of maintainers and have correct user permissions on PyPI, the following steps can be used to release a new version for ats-linter:

1. Make sure all unit tests are successful.

2. Tag the current commit on the main branch with a release tag, e.g., 1.2.3.

3. Push the new tag to the upstream repository, e.g., git push upstream 1.2.3

4. Wait for the CI system to build and test the new tag.

5. Github actions will automatically publish the new version on PyPI and conda-forge.

[1]

Even though, these resources focus on open source projects and communities, the general ideas behind collaborating with other developers to collectively create software are general and can be applied to all sorts of environments, including private companies and proprietary code bases.