Community

You can check out Kinto on Github at https://github.com/Kinto/kinto/.

Communication channels

How to contribute

Thanks for your interest in contributing to Kinto!

Note

We love community feedback and are glad to review contributions of any size - from typos in the documentation to critical bug fixes - so don’t be shy!

Report bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/Kinto/kinto/issues/new

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

  • Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
  • Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix bugs

Check out the open bugs - anything tagged with the easy-pick label could be a good choice for newcomers.

Implement features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with enhancement is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write documentation

Kinto could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official docs, in docstrings, or even on the Web in blog posts, articles, and such.

This official documentation is maintained in Github. The docs folder contains the documentation sources in reStructuredText format. And you can generate the docs locally with:

make docs

Output is written at docs/_build/html/index.html.

We obviously accept pull requests for this documentation, just as we accept them for bug fixes and features! See open issues.

Submit feedback

Any issue with the question label is open for feedback, so feel free to share your thoughts with us!

The best way to send feedback is to file a new issue on GitHub.

If you are proposing a feature:

  • Explain how you envision it working. Try to be as detailed as you can.
  • Try to keep the scope as narrow as possible. This will help make it easier to implement.
  • Feel free to include any code you might already have, even if it’s just a rough idea. This is a volunteer-driven project, and contributions are welcome :)

Contribute.json

Kinto implements the GET /contribute.json endpoint which provides structured open source contribution information.

See API docs.

Hack

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up Kinto for local development.

Get started!

  1. Fork the Kinto repo on GitHub.

  2. Clone your fork locally:

    git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/kinto.git
    
  3. Setup a local PostgreSQL database for the tests (more details):

    sudo apt-get install postgresql
    sudo -n -u postgres -s -- psql -c "ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'postgres';" -U postgres
    sudo -n -u postgres -s -- psql -c "CREATE DATABASE testdb ENCODING 'UTF8' TEMPLATE template0;" -U postgres
    sudo -n -u postgres -s -- psql -c "ALTER DATABASE testdb SET TIMEZONE TO UTC;" -U postgres
    
  4. Install and run Kinto locally (more details):

    make serve
    
  5. Create a branch for local development:

    git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
    

    Now you can make your changes locally.

  6. When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass the tests:

    make tests
    
  7. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

    $ git add .
    $ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
    $ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
    
  8. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Testing methodology

The tests are the specifications.

  • Each test class represents a situation or feature (e.g. class AnonymousCreationTest(unittest.TestCase):)
  • Each test method represents an aspect of the specification (e.g. def test_creation_is_allowed_if_enabled_in_settings(self):)
  • Each test method is independant
  • The assertions should only correspond to the aspect of the specification that this method targets
  • The setUp() method contains some initialization steps that are shared among the methods
  • If the methods have different initialization steps, they should probably be split into different test classes

When contributing a bug fix:

  1. Write a test that reproduces the problem: it should fail because of the bug
  2. Fix the faulty piece of code
  3. The test should now pass

When contributing a new feature:

  • Do not rush on the code
  • Step by step, you’ll write tests for each aspect and each edge case of the feature
  • Start very small: one simple test for the simplest situation

Once you get that simple bit working, you can iterate like this, a.k.a TDD:

  1. Add a new test that will fail because the code does not handle the new case
  2. Make the test pass with some new code
  3. Track your changes: git add -A
  4. Refactor and clean-up if necessary. If you’re lost, go back to the previous step with git checkout <file>
  5. Commit the changes: git commit -am "feature X"
  6. Go to step 1

Pull request guidelines

Note

Open a pull-request even if your contribution is not ready yet! It can be discussed and improved collaboratively!

Before we merge a pull request, we check that it meets these guidelines:

  1. The pull request should include tests.
  2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated.
  3. TravisCI integration tests should be green :) It will make sure the tests pass with every supported version of Python.

Hack core libraries

If you want to run Kinto with some core libraries under development (like Cornice), just install them from your local folder using pip.

For example:

cd ..
git clone https://github.com/mozilla-services/cornice.git
cd kinto/
.venv/bin/pip install -e ../cornice/

Cleaning your environment

There are three levels of cleaning your environment:

  • make clean will remove *.pyc files and __pycache__ directory.
  • make distclean will also remove *.egg-info files and *.egg, build and dist directories.
  • make maintainer-clean will also remove the .tox and the .venv directories.

How to release

In order to prepare a new release, we are following the following steps.

The prerelease and postrelease commands are coming from zest.releaser.

Install zest.releaser with the recommended dependencies. They contain wheel and twine, which are required to release a new version.

$ pip install "zest.releaser[recommended]"

Step 1

$ git checkout -b prepare-X.Y.Z
$ prerelease
$ vim docs/conf.py
  • Merge remaining pull requests
  • Update CHANGELOG.rst
  • If API was updated, update API changelog in docs/api/index.rst
  • Make sure HTTP_API_VERSION is up-to-date in kinto/__init__.py
  • Update the link in docs/configuration/production.rst
  • Update the kinto-admin if needed: https://github.com/Kinto/kinto-admin/releases
$ make update-kinto-admin
  • Update CONTRIBUTORS.rst. The following hairy command will output the full list:
$ git shortlog -sne | awk '{$1=""; sub(" ", ""); print}' | awk -F'<' '!x[$1]++' | awk -F'<' '!x[$2]++' | sort
  • Update known good versions of dependencies in requirements.txt with this command:
$ make build-requirements
  • Open a pull-request to release the new version.
$ git commit -a --amend
$ git push origin prepare-X.Y.Z

Step 2

Once the pull-request is validated, merge it and do a release. Use the release command to invoke the setup.py, which builds and uploads to PyPI

$ git checkout master
$ git merge --no-ff prepare-X.Y.Z
$ release
$ postrelease

Step 3

As a final step:

  • Close the milestone in Github
  • Create next milestone in Github in the case of a major release
  • Add entry in Github release page
  • Check that the version in ReadTheDocs is up-to-date
  • Check that a Docker image was built
  • Send mail to ML (If major release)
  • Tweet about it!

Upgrade:

  • Deploy new version on demo server
  • Upgrade dependency in kinto-dist repo
  • Upgrade version targetted in kinto-heroku repo
  • Upgrade version of Kinto server for the tests of clients and plugins repos (kinto-http.js, kinto-http.py, kinto-attachment, etc.)

That’s all folks!