path: root/HACKING.rst

Hacking on BuildStream
======================
Some tips and guidelines for developers hacking on BuildStream


Getting Started
---------------
After cloning the BuildStream module with git, you will want a development installation.

To do this, first install ``pip`` and run the following command in the buildstream
checkout directory::

  pip install --user -e .

The above will install some dependencies and also a symlink to your buildstream checkout
in your local user's python environment, so any changes you make to buildstream will be
effective for your user.

You can later uninstall the local installation by running::

  pip uninstall buildstream


Coding Style
------------
Coding style details for BuildStream


Style Guide
~~~~~~~~~~~
Python coding style for BuildStream is pep8, which is documented here: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

We have a couple of minor exceptions to this standard, we dont want to compromise
code readability by being overly restrictive on line length for instance.

The pep8 linter will run automatically when running the test suite.


Imports
~~~~~~~
Module imports inside BuildStream are done with . notation

Good::

  from .context import Context

Bad::

  from buildstream.context import Context

The exception to the above rule is when authoring plugins,
plugins do not reside in the same namespace so they must
address buildstream in the imports.

An element plugin will derive from Element by importing::

  from buildstream import Element

When importing utilities specifically, dont import function names
from there, instead::

  from . import utils

This makes things clear when reading code that said functions
are not defined in the same file but come from utils.py for example.


One Class One Module
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BuildStream is mostly Object Oriented with a few utility files.

* Every object should go into it's own file (module) inside the buildstream package
* Files should be named after their class in lower case with no underscore.

This is to say a class named FooBar will certainly reside in a file named foobar.py.
Unless FooBar is private in which case the file is of course _foobar.py.

When adding a public class, it should be imported in toplevel __init__.py
so that buildstream consumers can import it directly from the buildstream
package, without requiring knowledge of the BuildStream package structure,
which is allowed to change over time.


Private API
~~~~~~~~~~~
BuildStream strives to guarantee a minimal and comprehensive public API
surface both for embedders of the BuildStream pipeline and implementors
of custom plugin Elements and Sources.

Python does not have a real concept of private API, but as a convention
anything which is private uses an underscore prefix.

* Modules which are private have their file named _module.py
* Private classes are named _Class
* Private methods, class variables and instance variables have a leading underscore as well

Exceptions to the above rules is to follow a principle of least underscores:

* If a module is entirely private, there is no need for the classes
  it contains to have a leading underscore.
* If a class is entirely private, there is no need to mark it's members
  as private with leading underscores.


Documenting BuildStream
-----------------------
BuildStream starts out as a documented project from day one and uses
sphinx to document itself.

Useful links:

* Sphinx documentation: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/1.4.8/contents.html
* rst primer: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/rest.html


Building Docs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To build the current set of docs, just::

  cd doc
  make

This will give you a build/html directory with the html docs.


Documenting Conventions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When adding a new class to the buildstream core, an entry referring to
the new module where the new class is defined should be added to
the toplevel index manually in doc/source/index.rst.

We use the sphinx.ext.napoleon extension for the purpose of having
a bit nicer docstrings than the default sphinx docstrings.

A docstring for a method, class or function should have the following
format::

  """Brief description of entity

  Args:
     argument1 (type): Description of arg
     argument2 (type): Description of arg

  Returns:
     Description of returned thing indicating its type

  Raises:
     SomeError, SomeOtherError

  A detailed description can go here if one is needed, only
  after the above part documents the calling conventions.
  """


Testing BuildStream
-------------------
BuildStream uses pytest for regression tests and testing out
the behavior of newly added components.

The elaborate documentation for pytest can be found here: http://doc.pytest.org/en/latest/contents.html

Don't get lost in the docs if you don't need to, follow existing examples instead.


Running Tests
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To run the tests, just type::

  ./setup.py test

At the toplevel.

When debugging a test, it can be desirable to see the stdout
and stderr generated by a test, to do this use the --addopts
function to feed arguments to pytest as such::

  ./setup.py test --addopts -s

You can always abort on the first failure by running::

  ./setup.py test --addopts -x


Adding Tests
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tests are found in the tests subdirectory, inside of which
there is a separarate directory for each *domain* of tests.
All tests are collected as::

  tests/*/*.py

If the new test is not appropriate for the existing test domains,
then simply create a new directory for it under the tests subdirectory.

Various tests may include data files to test on, there are examples
of this in the existing tests. When adding data for a test, create
a subdirectory beside your test in which to store data.

When creating a test that needs data, use the datafiles extension
to decorate your test case (again, examples exist in the existing
tests for this), documentation on the datafiles extension can
be found here: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytest-datafiles


The MANIFEST.in and setup.py
----------------------------
When adding a dependency to BuildStream, it's important to update the setup.py accordingly.

When adding data files which need to be discovered at runtime by BuildStream, it's important
update setup.py accordingly.

When adding data files for the purpose of docs or tests, or anything that is not covered by
setup.py, it's important to update the MANIFEST.in accordingly.

At any time, running the following command to create a source distribution should result in
creating a tarball which contains everything we want it to include::

  ./setup.py sdist