Revision as of 07:59, 27 November 2010

Introduction

Because Sugar is an open source project, anyone can contribute to it and thus improve the learning experience of children all around the world.

Once you have fixed a bug or implemented a new feature, you can send it to the current maintainers of Sugar by following the code review process.

This process allows the maintainers to feel confident about taking the responsibility of delivering your code to children. This means applying it to the current code base, fixing any bugs that are later discovered in your code or as consequences of it, modifying your code to gain new features, assisting packagers, deployers and translators, etc.

It is strongly recommended that you read about the review process and Code guidelines before starting to code.

The process is composed by the following phases, explained below: preliminary discussion, proposal, discussion and acceptance.

Phases

Preliminary discussion

Except when the patch will be trivial, it's a good idea to discuss your idea and possible approaches on sugar-devel. This avoids duplicated work and will give you an idea of what is considered a good idea by others (maintainers, Design Team, etc.) before you commit substantial work in the patch itself.

This is especially important if you're going to make large changes. You will probably be asked to split up your changes in reasonably small, but logically independent parts that can be reviewed somewhat independently.

Proposal

If your patch addresses a bug which is not registered on the bug tracker yet, please open a new ticket for it.
Check your code follows the code guidelines. Automated style checkers can be quite helpful.
Reflect on and explain what your patch does by coming up with a patch description (see commit message guidelines).
Send your patch to sugar-devel (see below for details).
Add a testcase in a ticket comment. You need to mark it with |TestCase|. This adds better readability and our script that pulls together the test cases for each release is able to find it as well. For example:

|TestCase|

Click on Browse, Read, Pippy icons in the homepage and make sure all of them starts correctly.

Patch submission

We follow the Linux patch submission process for the most part. Some points specific to Sugar Labs are:

the affected module (e.g. sugar-toolkit) should be mentioned in the subject prefix
all patches get sent to sugar-devel
you need to clearly note all new dependencies in the patch description (see also below)

If you have revised your patch, addressing review comments, please:

add a version number to the subject prefix (e.g. git send-email --subject-prefix="PATCH v2 sugar")
mention your changes in a changelog below the marker line (the one with just --- on it). E.g.:

v1->v2: break up _recurse_dir into smaller functions

Recommended git user configuration:

git config --global diff.renames copies
git config --global sendemail.confirm always
git config --global 'url.gitorious@git.sugarlabs.org:.pushInsteadOf' git://git.sugarlabs.org/

Recommended per-repository git configuration, e.g. for sugar-datastore:

cd ~/sugar-jhbuild/source/sugar-datastore
git config format.subjectprefix "PATCH sugar-datastore"
git config sendemail.to "sugar-devel <sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org>"

Git configuration options that might come in handy:

git config --global merge.conflictstyle diff3
git config --global alias.send-to-ml-single '!git send-email -s -p --stat'
git config --global alias.send-to-ml-series '!git send-email --cover-letter --summary --annotate -s -p --stat'
git config format.headers "Mail-Followup-To: <sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org>"
git config sendemail.envelopesender sascha-ml-sugar-devel@dev.null

If you agree to publish your changes under the same license as the software you are changing, please add -s to the two aliases above (send-to-ml-single and send-to-ml-series). If you don't agree, don't post the patch! The reason this is mentioned as a separate step instead of adding it to the examples above is so you need to make a conscious decision and can't sue us for copyright infringement.

Discussion

Maintainers and other developers will review your patch as their time permits. Please allow for a few days, but feel free to "ping" (by either asking on #sugar or replying to your patch) if you haven't received any reply within a week.

Everyone (including you!) is invited to review patches. Not only does this free up time of the maintainers (they can wait until someone else did a first round of review), but also ensures we make the best use of our collective knowledge (no, the maintainers are neither perfect nor omniscient ;) ).

If a reviewer thinks your patch is good (and revelant) enough to be included in the upstream version of the software, (s)he will grant his or her Reviewed-By: tag (see the Linux patch submission process for details).

After you addressed review comments, you can submit a new version of your patch (see above for how to note what you changed). Please make it a reply to your original patch by using the --in-reply-to option to git send-email. E.g.: git send-to-ml-single --in-reply-to=<1290857483.723474@twin.sascha.silbe.org>

Acceptance

After your patch has been acknowledged by a maintainer, (s)he will push your code to the repository, including any tags (Reviewed-By:, Tested-By:, etc.) your patch got. From now on your code is part of the Sugar code base and the community (which includes you ;) ) will maintain it for you.

Dependencies

Dependencies need to be fulfilled on all platforms running Sugar (i.e., they need to be available at all and need to be installed which means occupying disk space), so think twice before introducing new ones. Please discuss them on sugar-devel in advance and clearly state them in the ticket. It's a always a good idea to check whether sufficiently recent versions of your proposed dependencies are already packaged for all (stable releases of the) major distributions, on all of their (semi-)supported architectures (e.g., ARM and PowerPC). If not, start requesting them (at the distribution bug trackers) ASAP and also mention it on sugar-devel and the ticket.

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 == Preliminary discussion ==
-Except when the patch will be trivial, it's a good idea to notify the maintainers that you are going to work on this issue and discuss possible approaches with them. This avoids duplicated work and will give you an idea of what is considered a good idea by the maintainers before you commit substantial work in the patch itself.
+Except when the patch will be trivial, it's a good idea to discuss your idea and possible approaches on [[Mailing Lists#Developer Lists|sugar-devel]]. This avoids duplicated work and will give you an idea of what is considered a good idea by others (maintainers, [[Design Team]], etc.) before you commit substantial work in the patch itself.
-May be interesting as well to discuss with the broad community about the usefulness of any proposed new feature. This way the maintainers will feel more motivated to commit their own time so that your work gets included.
+This is especially important if you're going to make large changes. You will probably be asked to split up your changes in reasonably small, but logically independent parts that can be reviewed somewhat independently.
-Plan your work together with the maintainer in such a way that code will be submitted in chunks of reasonable size, a good rule of thumb is in patches of below 2000 lines.
 == Proposal ==
-* If your patch addresses an issue which is not registered in [https://bugs.sugarlabs.org the Sugar Labs trac instance], please open a new ticket for it.
+* If your patch addresses a bug which is not registered on the [https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ bug tracker] yet, please open a new ticket for it.
-* Create your patch using the 'git format-patch' command. (<code>git format-patch HEAD^</code> will create a 00xx-blahblah.patch for every commit. So don't forget to git commit!!) Make sure you mention the ticket number in the commit comment.
+* Check your code follows the [[Development Team/Code guidelines|code guidelines]]. [[Development Team/Code guidelines#Tools|Automated style checkers]] can be quite helpful.
-* Attach the patch to the ticket
+* Reflect on and explain what your patch does by coming up with a patch description (see [[Activity Team/Git Introduction#Commit message guidelines|commit message guidelines]]).
-* Alternatively, you can add a link pointing to a cloned tree. Make sure it contains only the changes you propose for review.
+* Send your patch to [[Mailing Lists#Developer Lists|sugar-devel]] (see [[#Patch submission|below]] for details).
-* Add the keyword 'r?' to call the attention of reviewers.
 * Add a testcase in a ticket comment. You need to mark it with |TestCase|. This adds better readability and our script that pulls together the test cases for each release is able to find it as well. For example:
   |TestCase|
@@ Line 34: / Line 32: @@
   Click on Browse, Read, Pippy icons in the homepage and make sure all of them starts correctly.
-If your patch is a new feature and reasonably big, you may prefer to submit it for review to the Sugar-devel [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel mailing list]. If you do please add the 'r?' keyword to the ticket anyway and reference the mailing list thread.
+== Patch submission ==
-In order to make it easy for the reviewer please:
+We follow the [http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches Linux patch submission process] for the most part. Some points specific to Sugar Labs are:
+* the affected module (e.g. sugar-toolkit) should be mentioned in the subject prefix
+* all patches get sent to [[Mailing Lists#Developer Lists|sugar-devel]]
+* you need to clearly note all new dependencies in the patch description (see also [[#Dependencies|below]])
+If you have revised your patch, addressing review comments, please:
+* add a version number to the subject prefix (e.g. <code>git send-email --subject-prefix="PATCH v2 sugar"</code>)
+* mention your changes in a changelog below the marker line (the one with just <code>---</code> on it). E.g.:
+ v1->v2: break up _recurse_dir into smaller functions
+Recommended git user configuration:
+* <code>git config --global diff.renames copies</code>
+* <code>git config --global sendemail.confirm always</code>
+* <code>git config --global 'url.gitorious@git.sugarlabs.org:.pushInsteadOf' git://git.sugarlabs.org/</code>
+Recommended per-repository git configuration, e.g. for sugar-datastore:
+* <code>cd ~/sugar-jhbuild/source/sugar-datastore</code>
+* <code>git config format.subjectprefix "PATCH sugar-datastore"</code>
+* <code>git config sendemail.to "sugar-devel &lt;sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org&gt;"</code>
+Git configuration options that might come in handy:
+* <code>git config --global merge.conflictstyle diff3</code>
+* <code>git config --global alias.send-to-ml-single '!git send-email -s -p --stat'</code>
+* <code>git config --global alias.send-to-ml-series '!git send-email --cover-letter --summary --annotate -s -p --stat'</code>
+* <code>git config format.headers "Mail-Followup-To: &lt;sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org&gt;"</code>
+* <code>git config sendemail.envelopesender sascha-ml-sugar-devel@dev.null</code>
+If you agree to publish your changes under the same license as the software you are changing, please add <code>-s</code> to the two aliases above (send-to-ml-single and send-to-ml-series). If you don't agree, don't post the patch! The reason this is mentioned as a separate step instead of adding it to the examples above is so you need to make a conscious decision and can't sue us for copyright infringement.
-* note which module is affected e.g., sugar, sugar-toolkit...
-* note possible dependencies e.g. the patch is for sugar but depend on the current HEAD of sugar-toolkit which went in 5 seconds ago (see also separate section about external dependencies below)
 == Discussion ==
-Maintainers and peers of the Sugar modules periodically check the review queue in Trac. If a few days pass without comment since the patch was submitted, please ping the maintainer in IRC or in the mailing list. At times maintainers are very busy and will appreciate the ping, even if repeated.
+Maintainers and other developers will review your patch as their time permits. Please allow for a few days, but feel free to "ping" (by either asking on [[IRC#irc.freenode.net_channels|#sugar]] or replying to your patch) if you haven't received any reply within a week.
-The reviewer will read your patch, evaluate its impact to the existing code base and comment on it. The 'r?' keyword will be changed to 'r+' if the patch is accepted, to 'r!' if further information or action is requested from the submitter, or to 'r-' if the patch gets rejected.
+Everyone (including you!) is invited to review patches. Not only does this free up time of the maintainers (they can wait until someone else did a first round of review), but also ensures we make the best use of our collective knowledge (no, the maintainers are neither perfect nor omniscient ;) ).
-See [[Development Team/Code guidelines|Code guidelines]] for common criteria for code in Sugar.
+If a reviewer thinks your patch is good (and revelant) enough to be included in the upstream version of the software, (s)he will grant his or her Reviewed-By: tag (see the [http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches Linux patch submission process] for details).
-Once you have answered the questions and/or attached a new patch, set the 'r!' keyword back to 'r?'.
+After you addressed review comments, you can submit a new version of your patch (see [[#Patch submission|above]] for how to note what you changed). Please make it a reply to your original patch by using the <code>[http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-format-patch.html#_options --in-reply-to]</code> option to <code>git send-email</code>. E.g.: <code>git send-to-ml-single --in-reply-to=&lt;1290857483.723474@twin.sascha.silbe.org&gt;</code>
 == Acceptance ==
-Once your patch has received a 'r+', the reviewer will push your code to the repository. From now on your code is part of the Sugar code base and the community will maintain it for you.
+After your patch has been acknowledged by a maintainer, (s)he will push your code to the repository, including any tags (Reviewed-By:, Tested-By:, etc.) your patch got.  From now on your code is part of the Sugar code base and the community (which includes you ;) ) will maintain it for you.
-== Commit ==
-If you have commit access to the repositories you should read the [[Activity_Team/Git|commit guidelines]] as well before submitting your changes.
 = Dependencies =

Difference between revisions of "Development Team/Code Review"