Contributing to Kallithea
Kallithea is developed and maintained by its users. Please join us and scratch your own itch.
Infrastructure
The main repository is hosted on Our Own Kallithea (aka OOK) at https://kallithea-scm.org/repos/kallithea/, our self-hosted instance of Kallithea.
Please use the mailing list to send patches or report issues.
We use Weblate to translate the user interface messages into languages other than English. Join our project on Hosted Weblate to help us. To register, you can use your Bitbucket or GitHub account. See :ref:`translations` for more details.
Getting started
To get started with Kallithea development run the following commands in your bash shell:
hg clone https://kallithea-scm.org/repos/kallithea cd kallithea python3 -m venv venv . venv/bin/activate pip install --upgrade "pip<24.1" "setuptools<67" pip install --upgrade -e . -r dev_requirements.txt python-ldap python-pam kallithea-cli config-create my.ini kallithea-cli db-create -c my.ini --user=user --email=user@example.com --password=password --repos=/tmp kallithea-cli front-end-build gearbox serve -c my.ini --reload & firefox http://127.0.0.1:5000/
Contribution flow
Starting from an existing Kallithea clone, make sure it is up to date with the latest upstream changes:
hg pull hg update
Review the :ref:`contributing-guidelines` and :ref:`coding-guidelines`.
If you are new to Mercurial, refer to Mercurial Quick Start and Beginners Guide on the Mercurial wiki.
Now, make some changes and test them (see :ref:`contributing-tests`). Don't forget to add new tests to cover new functionality or bug fixes.
For documentation changes, run make html from the docs directory to generate the HTML result, then review them in your browser.
Before submitting any changes, run the cleanup script:
./scripts/run-all-cleanup
When you are completely ready, you can send your changes to the community for review and inclusion, via the mailing list (via hg email).
Internal dependencies
We try to keep the code base clean and modular and avoid circular dependencies. Code should only invoke code in layers below itself.
Imports should import whole modules from their parent module, perhaps as a shortened name. Avoid imports from modules.
To avoid cycles and partially initialized modules, __init__.py should not contain any non-trivial imports. The top level of a module should not be a facade for the module functionality.
Common code for a module is often in base.py.
The important part of the dependency graph is approximately linear. In the following list, modules may only depend on modules below them:
- tests
- Just get the job done - anything goes.
- bin/ & config/ & alembic/
- The main entry points, defined in setup.py. Note: The TurboGears template use config for the high WSGI application - this is not for low level configuration.
- controllers/
- The top level web application, with TurboGears using the root controller as entry point, and routing dispatching to other controllers.
- templates/**.html
- The "view", rendering to HTML. Invoked by controllers which can pass them anything from lower layers - especially helpers available as h will cut through all layers, and c gives access to global variables.
- lib/helpers.py
- High level helpers, exposing everything to templates as h. It depends on everything and has a huge dependency chain, so it should not be used for anything else. TODO.
- controllers/base.py
- The base class of controllers, with lots of model knowledge.
- lib/auth.py
- All things related to authentication. TODO.
- lib/utils.py
- High level utils with lots of model knowledge. TODO.
- lib/hooks.py
- Hooks into "everything" to give centralized logging to database, cache invalidation, and extension handling. TODO.
- model/
- Convenience business logic wrappers around database models.
- model/db.py
- Defines the database schema and provides some additional logic.
- model/scm.py
- All things related to anything. TODO.
- SQLAlchemy
- Database session and transaction in thread-local variables.
- lib/utils2.py
- Low level utils specific to Kallithea.
- lib/webutils.py
- Low level generic utils with awareness of the TurboGears environment.
- TurboGears
- Request, response and state like i18n gettext in thread-local variables. External dependency with global state - usage should be minimized.
- lib/vcs/
- Previously an independent library. No awareness of web, database, or state.
- lib/*
- Various "pure" functionality not depending on anything else.
- __init__
- Very basic Kallithea constants - some of them are set very early based on .ini.
This is not exactly how it is right now, but we aim for something like that. Especially the areas marked as TODO have some problems that need untangling.
Running tests
After finishing your changes make sure all tests pass cleanly. Run the testsuite by invoking py.test from the project root:
py.test
Note that on unix systems, the temporary directory (/tmp or where $TMPDIR points) must allow executable files; Git hooks must be executable, and the test suite creates repositories in the temporary directory. Linux systems with /tmp mounted noexec will thus fail.
Tests can be run on PostgreSQL like:
sudo -u postgres createuser 'kallithea-test' --pwprompt # password password sudo -u postgres createdb 'kallithea-test' --owner 'kallithea-test' REUSE_TEST_DB='postgresql://kallithea-test:password@localhost/kallithea-test' py.test
Tests can be run on MariaDB/MySQL like:
echo "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON \`kallithea-test\`.* TO 'kallithea-test'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'" | sudo -u mysql mysql TEST_DB='mysql://kallithea-test:password@localhost/kallithea-test?charset=utf8mb4' py.test
You can also use tox to run the tests with all supported Python versions.
When running tests, Kallithea generates a test.ini based on template values in kallithea/tests/conftest.py and populates the SQLite database specified there.
It is possible to avoid recreating the full test database on each invocation of the tests, thus eliminating the initial delay. To achieve this, run the tests as:
gearbox serve -c /tmp/kallithea-test-XXX/test.ini --pid-file=test.pid --daemon KALLITHEA_WHOOSH_TEST_DISABLE=1 KALLITHEA_NO_TMP_PATH=1 py.test kill -9 $(cat test.pid)
In these commands, the following variables are used:
KALLITHEA_WHOOSH_TEST_DISABLE=1 - skip whoosh index building and tests KALLITHEA_NO_TMP_PATH=1 - disable new temp path for tests, used mostly for testing_vcs_operations
You can run individual tests by specifying their path as argument to py.test. py.test also has many more options, see py.test -h. Some useful options are:
-k EXPRESSION only run tests which match the given substring
expression. An expression is a python evaluable
expression where all names are substring-matched
against test names and their parent classes. Example:
-x, --exitfirst exit instantly on first error or failed test.
--lf rerun only the tests that failed at the last run (or
all if none failed)
--ff run all tests but run the last failures first. This
may re-order tests and thus lead to repeated fixture
setup/teardown
--pdb start the interactive Python debugger on errors.
-s, --capture=no don't capture stdout (any stdout output will be
printed immediately)
Performance tests
A number of performance tests are present in the test suite, but they are not run in a standard test run. These tests are useful to evaluate the impact of certain code changes with respect to performance.
To run these tests:
env TEST_PERFORMANCE=1 py.test kallithea/tests/performance
To analyze performance, you could install pytest-profiling, which enables the --profile and --profile-svg options to py.test.
Contribution guidelines
Kallithea is GPLv3 and we assume all contributions are made by the committer/contributor and under GPLv3 unless explicitly stated. We do care a lot about preservation of copyright and license information for existing code that is brought into the project.
Contributions will be accepted in most formats -- such as commits hosted on your own Kallithea instance, or patches sent by email to the kallithea-general mailing list.
Make sure to test your changes both manually and with the automatic tests before posting.
We care about quality and review and keeping a clean repository history. We might give feedback that requests polishing contributions until they are "perfect". We might also rebase and collapse and make minor adjustments to your changes when we apply them.
We try to make sure we have consensus on the direction the project is taking. Everything non-sensitive should be discussed in public -- preferably on the mailing list. We aim at having all non-trivial changes reviewed by at least one other core developer before pushing. Obvious non-controversial changes will be handled more casually.
There is a main development branch ("default") which is generally stable so that it can be (and is) used in production. There is also a "stable" branch that is almost exclusively reserved for bug fixes or trivial changes. Experimental changes should live elsewhere (for example in a pull request) until they are ready.
Coding guidelines
We don't have a formal coding/formatting standard. We are currently using a mix of Mercurial's (https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/CodingStyle), pep8, and consistency with existing code. Run scripts/run-all-cleanup before committing to ensure some basic code formatting consistency.
We support Python 3.6 and later.
We try to support the most common modern web browsers. IE9 is still supported to the extent it is feasible, IE8 is not.
We primarily support Linux and OS X on the server side but Windows should also work.
HTML templates should use 2 spaces for indentation ... but be pragmatic. We should use templates cleverly and avoid duplication. We should use reasonable semantic markup with element classes and IDs that can be used for styling and testing. We should only use inline styles in places where it really is semantic (such as display: none).
JavaScript must use ; between/after statements. Indentation 4 spaces. Inline multiline functions should be indented two levels -- one for the () and one for {}. Variables holding jQuery objects should be named with a leading $.
Commit messages should have a leading short line summarizing the changes. For bug fixes, put (Issue #123) at the end of this line.
Use American English grammar and spelling overall. Use English title case for page titles, button labels, headers, and 'labels' for fields in forms.
Template helpers (that is, everything in kallithea.lib.helpers) should only be referenced from templates. If you need to call a helper from the Python code, consider moving the function somewhere else (e.g. to the model).
Notes on the SQLAlchemy session
Each HTTP request runs inside an independent SQLAlchemy session (as well as in an independent database transaction). Session is the session manager and factory. Session() will create a new session on-demand or return the current session for the active thread. Many database operations are methods on such session instances. The session will generally be removed by TurboGears automatically.
Database model objects (almost) always belong to a particular SQLAlchemy session, which means that SQLAlchemy will ensure that they're kept in sync with the database (but also means that they cannot be shared across requests).
Objects can be added to the session using Session().add, but this is rarely needed:
- When creating a database object by calling the constructor directly, it must explicitly be added to the session.
- When creating an object using a factory function (like create_repo), the returned object has already (by convention) been added to the session, and should not be added again.
- When getting an object from the session (via Session().query or any of the utility functions that look up objects in the database), it's already part of the session, and should not be added again. SQLAlchemy monitors attribute modifications automatically for all objects it knows about and syncs them to the database.
SQLAlchemy also flushes changes to the database automatically; manually calling Session().flush is usually only necessary when the Python code needs the database to assign an "auto-increment" primary key ID to a freshly created model object (before flushing, the ID attribute will be None).
Debugging
A good way to trace what Kallithea is doing is to keep an eye on the output on stdout/stderr of the server process. Perhaps change my.ini to log at DEBUG or INFO level, especially [logger_kallithea], but perhaps also other loggers. It is often easier to add additional log or print statements than to use a Python debugger.
Sometimes it is simpler to disable errorpage.enabled and perhaps also trace_errors.enable to expose raw errors instead of adding extra processing. Enabling debug can be helpful for showing and exploring tracebacks in the browser, but is also insecure and will add extra processing.
TurboGears2 DebugBar
It is possible to enable the TurboGears2-provided DebugBar, a toolbar overlayed over the Kallithea web interface, allowing you to see:
- timing information of the current request, including profiling information
- request data, including GET data, POST data, cookies, headers and environment variables
- a list of executed database queries, including timing and result values
DebugBar is only activated when debug = true is set in the configuration file. This is important, because the DebugBar toolbar will be visible for all users, and allow them to see information they should not be allowed to see. Like is anyway the case for debug = true, do not use this in production!
To enable DebugBar, install tgext.debugbar and kajiki (typically via pip) and restart Kallithea (in debug mode).