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Contributing

Thank you for considering making contributions to Tendermint and related repositories! Start by taking a look at the coding repo for overall information on repository workflow and standards.

Please follow standard github best practices: fork the repo, branch from the tip of develop, make some commits, and submit a pull request to develop. See the open issues for things we need help with!

Please make sure to use gofmt before every commit - the easiest way to do this is have your editor run it for you upon saving a file.

Forking

Please note that Go requires code to live under absolute paths, which complicates forking. While my fork lives at https://github.com/ebuchman/tendermint, the code should never exist at $GOPATH/src/github.com/ebuchman/tendermint. Instead, we use git remote to add the fork as a new remote for the original repo, $GOPATH/src/github.com/tendermint/tendermint , and do all the work there.

For instance, to create a fork and work on a branch of it, I would:

  • Create the fork on github, using the fork button.
  • Go to the original repo checked out locally (i.e. $GOPATH/src/github.com/tendermint/tendermint)
  • git remote rename origin upstream
  • git remote add origin [email protected]:ebuchman/basecoin.git

Now origin refers to my fork and upstream refers to the tendermint version. So I can git push -u origin master to update my fork, and make pull requests to tendermint from there. Of course, replace ebuchman with your git handle.

To pull in updates from the origin repo, run

  • git fetch upstream
  • git rebase upstream/master (or whatever branch you want)

Please don't make Pull Requests to master.

Dependencies

We use dep to manage dependencies.

That said, the master branch of every Tendermint repository should just build with go get, which means they should be kept up-to-date with their dependencies so we can get away with telling people they can just go get our software.

Since some dependencies are not under our control, a third party may break our build, in which case we can fall back on dep ensure (or make get_vendor_deps). Even for dependencies under our control, dep helps us to keep multiple repos in sync as they evolve. Anything with an executable, such as apps, tools, and the core, should use dep.

Run dep status to get a list of vendor dependencies that may not be up-to-date.

When updating dependencies, please only update the particular dependencies you need. Instead of running dep ensure -update, which will update anything, specify exactly the dependency you want to update, eg. dep ensure -update github.com/tendermint/go-amino.

Vagrant

If you are a Vagrant user, you can get started hacking Tendermint with the commands below.

NOTE: In case you installed Vagrant in 2017, you might need to run vagrant box update to upgrade to the latest ubuntu/xenial64.

vagrant up
vagrant ssh
make test

Changelog

Every fix, improvement, feature, or breaking change should be made in a pull-request that includes an update to the CHANGELOG_PENDING.md file.

Changelog entries should be formatted as follows:

- [module] \#xxx Some description about the change (@contributor)

Here, module is the part of the code that changed (typically a top-level Go package), xxx is the pull-request number, and contributor is the author/s of the change.

It's also acceptable for xxx to refer to the relevent issue number, but pull-request numbers are preferred. Note this means pull-requests should be opened first so the changelog can then be updated with the pull-request's number. There is no need to include the full link, as this will be added automatically during release. But please include the backslash and pound, eg. \#2313.

Changelog entries should be ordered alphabetically according to the module, and numerically according to the pull-request number.

Changes with multiple classifications should be doubly included (eg. a bug fix that is also a breaking change should be recorded under both).

Breaking changes are further subdivided according to the APIs/users they impact. Any change that effects multiple APIs/users should be recorded multiply - for instance, a change to the Blockchain Protocol that removes a field from the header should also be recorded under CLI/RPC/Config since the field will be removed from the header in rpc responses as well.

Branching Model and Release

All repos should adhere to the branching model: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/. This means that all pull-requests should be made against develop. Any merge to master constitutes a tagged release.

Development Procedure:

  • the latest state of development is on develop
  • develop must never fail make test
  • never --force onto develop (except when reverting a broken commit, which should seldom happen)
  • create a development branch either on github.com/tendermint/tendermint, or your fork (using git remote add origin)
  • make changes and update the CHANGELOG_PENDING.md to record your change
  • before submitting a pull request, run git rebase on top of the latest develop

Pull Merge Procedure:

  • ensure pull branch is based on a recent develop
  • run make test to ensure that all tests pass
  • merge pull request
  • the unstable branch may be used to aggregate pull merges before fixing tests

Release Procedure:

  • start on develop
  • run integration tests (see test_integrations in Makefile)
  • prepare changelog:
    • copy CHANGELOG_PENDING.md to top of CHANGELOG.md
    • run python ./scripts/linkify_changelog.py CHANGELOG.md to add links for all issues
    • run bash ./scripts/authors.sh to get a list of authors since the latest release, and add the github aliases of external contributors to the top of the changelog. To lookup an alias from an email, try bash ./scripts/authors.sh <email>
    • reset the CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
  • bump versions
  • push to release/vX.X.X to run the extended integration tests on the CI
  • merge to master
  • merge master back to develop

Hotfix Procedure:

  • start on master
  • checkout a new branch named hotfix-vX.X.X
  • make the required changes
    • these changes should be small and an absolute necessity
    • add a note to CHANGELOG.md
  • bump versions
  • push to hotfix-vX.X.X to run the extended integration tests on the CI
  • merge hotfix-vX.X.X to master
  • merge hotfix-vX.X.X to develop
  • delete the hotfix-vX.X.X branch

Testing

All repos should be hooked up to CircleCI.

If they have .go files in the root directory, they will be automatically tested by circle using go test -v -race ./.... If not, they will need a circle.yml. Ideally, every repo has a Makefile that defines make test and includes its continuous integration status using a badge in the README.md.