How to Contribute

Contributions are welcome! Not familiar with the codebase yet? No problem! There are many ways to contribute to open source projects: reporting bugs, helping with the documentation, spreading the word and of course, adding new features and patches.

Getting Started

  1. Make sure you have a GitHub account.
  2. Open a new issue, assuming one does not already exist.
  3. Clearly describe the issue including steps to reproduce when it is a bug.

Making Changes

  • Fork the repository on GitHub.
  • Create a topic branch from where you want to base your work.
  • This is usually the master branch.
  • Please avoid working directly on master branch.
  • Make commits of logical units (if needed rebase your feature branch before submitting it).
  • Check for unnecessary whitespace with git diff --check before committing.
  • Make sure your commit messages are in the proper format.
  • If your commit fixes an open issue, reference it in the commit message (#15).
  • Make sure your code comforms to PEP8.
  • Make sure you have added the necessary tests for your changes.
  • Run all the tests to assure nothing else was accidentally broken.
  • Don’t forget to add yourself to AUTHORS.

These guidelines also apply when helping with documentation (actually, for typos and minor additions you might choose to fork and edit).

Submitting Changes

  • Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository.
  • Submit a Pull Request.
  • Wait for maintainer feedback.

First time contributor?

It’s alright. We’ve all been there.

Dont’ know where to start?

There are usually several TODO comments scattered around the codebase, maybe check them out and see if you have ideas, or can help with them. Also, check the open issues in case there’s something that sparks your interest. What about documentation? I suck at english so if you’re fluent with it (or notice any error), why not help with that? In any case, other than GitHub help pages, you might want to check this excellent Effective Guide to Pull Requests

Running the Tests

Cerberus runs under Python 2.6, 2.7, Python 3.3, Python 3.4 and PyPy. Therefore tests will be run in those four platforms in our continuous integration server.

The easiest way to get started is to run the tests in your local environment with:

$ python setup.py test

Testing with other Python versions

Before you submit a pull request, make sure your tests and changes run in all supported python versions: 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and PyPy. Instead of creating all those environments by hand, Cerberus uses tox.

Make sure you have all required python versions installed and run:

$ pip install tox  # First time only
$ tox

This might take some time the first run as the different virtual environments are created and dependencies are installed. If everything is ok, you will see the following:

_________ summary _________
py26: commands succeeded
py27: commands succeeded
py33: commands succeeded
py34: commands succeeded
pypy: commands succeeded
flake8: commands succeeded
congratulations :)

If something goes wrong and one test fails, you might need to run that test in the specific python version. You can use the created environments to run some specific tests. For example, if a test suite fails in Python 3.4:

# From the project folder
$ tox -e py34

Using Pytest

You also choose to run the whole test suite using pytest:

# Run the whole test suite
$ py.test

Continuous Integration

Each time code is pushed to the master branch the whole test-suite is executed on Travis-CI. This is also the case for pull-requests. When a pull request is submitted and the CI run fails two things happen: a ‘the build is broken’ email is sent to the submitter; the request is rejected. The contributor can then fix the code, add one or more commits as needed, and push again.

The CI will also run flake8 so make sure that your code complies to PEP8 before submitting a pull request, or be prepared to be mail-spammed by CI.

Source Code

Source code is available at GitHub.