So you found a bug in Stork or plan to develop a feature and want to send us a patch? Great! This page will explain how to contribute your changes smoothly.
Here's a quick list of how to contribute a patch:
- Create an account on GitLab.
- Open an issue in the Stork project; make sure it describes what you want to change and why.
- Ask someone from the ISC team to give you access/permission to fork Stork (@tomek, @vicky, @ondrej, @slawek, or anyone else on the Stork dev team).
- Fork the Stork code: go to the Stork project page and click the Fork button. If you can't, you didn't complete step 3.
- Implement your fix or feature, and push the code to your repo. Make sure it compiles, has unit-tests, is documented, and does what it's supposed to do.
- Open a merge request: go to the Stork project merge requests page and click New merge request. If you don't see the button, you didn't complete step 3.
- Participate in the code review: once you submit the MR, someone from ISC will eventually get to the issue and will review your code. Please make sure you respond to comments. It's likely you'll be asked to update the code.
For a much more detailed description with details, see the text below.
Before you start working on a patch or a new feature, it is a good idea to discuss it first with the Stork developers. The stork-dev mailing list is a great place to ask your questions.
OK, so you have written a patch? Great! Before you submit it, make sure that your code compiles. This may seem obvious, but there's more to it. You have surely checked that it compiles on your system, but Stork is portable software. It is compiled on several operating systems besides popular Linux flavors (see Compatible Systems). Will your code compile and work on them? What about endianness? It is likely that you used a regular x86 architecture machine to write your patch, but the software is expected to run on many other architectures.
Does your patch conform to the Stork coding guidelines? You can submit a patch that does not adhere to them, but that will reduce its chances of being accepted. If the deviations are minor, one of the Stork engineers who does the review will likely fix the issues. However, if there are lots of issues, the reviewer may simply reject the patch and ask you to fix it before re-submitting.
One of the ground rules in Stork development is that every piece of code has to be properly tested. Stork unit-tests cover all non-trivial functions and methods. Even if you are fixing something small, like a single line of code, you should write unit-tests verifying the correctness of your change. This is also very important for any new code. If you write a new function, method, or class, you definitely must write unit-tests for it. There are two kinds of unit-tests in Stork: backend tests (written in Golang) and UI unit-tests (written in Typescript). Depending on the scope of your changes, you will have to write the backend unit-tests, UI unit-tests, or both.
To ensure that everything is tested, ISC uses a development method called Test Driven Development (TDD). In TDD, a feature is developed alongside the tests, preferably with the tests being written first. In detail, a test is written for a small piece of functionality and run against the existing code. (In the case where the test is a unit test for a function, it would be run against an empty (unimplemented) function.) The test should fail. A minimal amount of code is then written, just enough to get the test to pass. Then the process is repeated for the next small piece of functionality. This continues until all the desired functionality has been implemented.
This approach has two advantages:
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By writing a test first and then only enough code to pass the test, that code is fully tested. By repeating this process until the feature is fully implemented, all the code gets test coverage. We avoid the situation where not enough tests have been written to check all the code.
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By running the test before the code implementing the function is written and observing the test fail, you can detect the situation where a bug in the test code will cause it to pass regardless of the code being tested.
Initially, some people unfamiliar with that approach react with "but my change is simple and I tested that it works." That approach is both insufficient and short-sighted. It is insufficient, because manual testing is by definition laborious and can't really be done on the multitude of systems we plan to run Stork on. It is short-sighted, because even with your best intentions you will not be able to dedicate any significant amount of time for repeated testing of your improved code. In general, ISC's projects are long-lasting. Take BIND 9 or ISC DHCP as examples: both have been around for more than two decades. Over such long periods, code tends to be refactored several times. The change you made may be affected by some other change or by the code that hasn't been written yet.
The first step in writing a patch or new feature should be to get the source code from our Git repository. The procedure is very easy and is explained here. While it is possible to provide a patch against the latest release, it makes the review process much easier if it is for the latest code from the Git master branch.
ISC uses GitLab to manage its source code. While we also maintain a presence on GitHub, the process of syncing GitLab to GitHub is mostly automated and Stork developers rarely look at GitHub.
ISC's GitLab has been a target for spammers in the past, so it is now set up defensively. In particular, new users cannot fork the code on their own; someone from ISC has to manually grant the ability to fork projects. Fortunately, this is easy to do and we gladly do this for anyone who asks and provides a good reason. "I'd like to fix bug X or develop feature Y" is an excellent reason. The best place to ask is either via the stork-dev mailing list, requesting access to the Stork project, or by asking in a comment on your issue. Please make sure you tag one of our administrators (@tomek, @slawek, @marcin, or @vicky) by name to automatically notify them.
Once you fork the Stork code in GitLab, you have your own copy; you can commit your changes there and push them to your copy of the Stork repo. Once you feel that your patch is ready, go to the Stork project and submit a merge request.
If you can't send the patch on GitLab, the next best way is to send a pull request (PR) on GitHub.
This is almost as good as sending an MR on GitLab, but the downside is that the Stork devs don't look at GitHub very frequently, so it may be a while before we notice it. And when we do, the chances are we will be busy with other things. With GitLab, your MR will stare at us the whole time, so we'll get around to it much quicker. But we understand that there are some cases where people may prefer GitHub over GitLab.
See the excellent documentation on GitHub: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request/
for details. In essence, you need a GitHub account (spam/hassle free, takes one minute to set
up). Then you can fork the Stork repository, commit changes to your repo, and ask us to pull your
changes into the official Stork repository. This has a number of advantages. First, it is made against a
specific code version, which can be easily checked with the git log command. Second, this request pops
up instantly on our list of open pull requests and will stay there. The third benefit is that the
pull request mechanism is very flexible. Stork engineers (and other users) can comment on it,
attach links, mention other users, etc. As a submitter, you can augment the patch by committing extra
changes to your repository. Those extra commits will appear instantly in the pull request, which is
really useful during the review. Finally, Stork developers can better assess all open pull requests
and add labels to them, such as "enhancement", "bug", or "unit-tests missing". This makes our lives
easier. Oh, and your commits will later be shown as yours in the GitHub history. If you care about that
kind of thing, once the patch is merged, you'll be automatically listed as a contributor and Stork
will be listed as a project you have contributed to.
Well, you are out of luck. There are other ways, but they're really awkward and the chances of your patch being ignored are really high. Anyway, here they are:
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Send a patch to the stork-dev list. This is the third-best method, if you can't or don't want to use GitLab or GitHub. If you send a patch to the mailing list at an inconvenient time, e.g. shortly before a release, the Stork developers may miss it, or they may see it but not have time to look at it. Nevertheless, it is still doable and we have successfully accepted patches that way in other projects. It just takes more time from everyone involved, so it's a slower process in general.
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Create an issue in the Stork GitLab and attach your patch to it. However, if you don't specify the base version against which it was created, one of the Stork developers will have to guess, or will have to figure it out by trial and error. If the code doesn't compile, the reviewer will not know if the patch is broken or if maybe it was applied to the incorrect base code. Another frequent problem is that it may be possible that the patch didn't include all the new files you have added. If we happen to have any comments that you as submitter are expected to address (and in the overwhelming majority of cases, we will), you will be asked to send an updated patch. It is not uncommon to see several rounds of such reviews, so this can get very complicated very quickly. Note that you should not add your issue to any milestone; the Stork team has a process to go through issues that are unassigned to any milestone. Having an issue in GitLab ensures that the patch will never be forgotten and it will show up on our GitLab reports. It's not required, but it will be much appreciated if you send a short note to the stork-dev mailing list explaining what you did with the code and announce the issue number.
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Send a tarball with your modified code. This is really the worst way one can contribute a patch, because someone will need to find out which version the code was based on and generate the patch. It's not rocket science, but it is time-consuming if the Stork developer does not know the version in advance. The mailing list has a limit on message sizes (for good reason), so you'll likely need to upload it somewhere else first. Stork developers often don't pick up new issues instantly, so it may have to wait weeks before the tarball is looked at. The tarball does not benefit from most of the advantages mentioned for GitLab or GitHub, like the ability to easily update the code, have a meaningful discussion, or see what the exact scope of changes are. Nevertheless, if we are given the choice of getting a tarball or not getting a patch at all, we prefer tarballs. Just keep in mind that processing a tarball is really cumbersome for the Stork developers, so it may take significantly longer than other ways.
Once you make your patch available using one of the ways above, please create a GitLab issue. While we can create one ourselves, we prefer the original submitter to do it as he or she has the best understanding of the purpose of the change and should have any extra information about OS, version, why it was done this specific way, etc. If there is no MR and no GitLab issue, you risk the issue not showing up on ISC's radar. Depending on the subjective importance and urgency as perceived by the ISC engineering team, the issue or MR will be assigned to a milestone.
At some point, a Stork developer will do a review, but it may not happen immediately. Unfortunately, developers are usually working under a tight schedule, so any extra unplanned review work may take a while. Having said that, we value external contributions very much and will do whatever we can to review patches in a timely manner. Don't get discouraged if your patch is not accepted after the first review. To keep the code quality high, we use the same review processes for external patches as we do for internal code. It may take several cycles of review/updated patch submissions before the code is finally accepted. The nature of the review process is that it emphasizes areas that need improvement. If you are not used to the review process, you may get the impression that all the feedback is negative. It is not: even the Stork developers seldom see initial reviews that say "All OK please merge."
Once the process is almost complete, the developer will likely ask you how you would like to be credited (for example, by first and last name, by nickname, by company name, or anonymously). Typically we will add a note to the ChangeLog.md file, as well as set you as the author of the commit applying the patch and update the contributors section in the AUTHORS file. If the contributed feature is big or critical for whatever reason, it may also be mentioned in release notes.
Sadly, we sometimes see patches that are submitted and then the submitter never responds to our comments or requests for an updated patch. Depending on the nature of the patch, we may either fix the outstanding issues on our own and get another Stork developer to review them, or the issue may end up in our Outstanding milestone. When a new release is started, we go through the issues in Outstanding, select a small number of them, and move them to the current milestone. Keep that in mind if you plan to submit a patch and forget about it. We may accept it eventually, but it's a much, much faster process if you participate in it.