121 lines
5.3 KiB
ReStructuredText
121 lines
5.3 KiB
ReStructuredText
Contributing to Boxes.py
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========================
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You are thinking about contributing to Boxes.py? That's great!
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Boxes.py is designed to be re-used and extended.
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This document gives you some guidelines how your contribution is most
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likely to impact the development and your changes are most likely to
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be merged into the upstream repository.
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Most of them should be just general best practises and not be
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surprising. Don't worry if you find them too complicated. It is OK
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leave the final touch to someone else.
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Writing code for Boxes.py
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-------------------------
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You will often be compelled to just do a quick thing that will solve
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your immediate needs. That's fine. But nevertheless it is often worth
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doing things the right way and be able to submit your changes
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upstream. For one to give something back to the community. But also
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for purly selfish reasons like getting the code maintained. Also
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Boxes.py is designed to make doing things properly the easy way.
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Here are some guidelines that make this easier. Depending on what you
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are up to they may apply to a varying degree. It's ok to submit
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patches that are not quite ready yet. But please state in the pull
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request message what you think the status is and whether you want help
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or are going to finish it on your own.
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* Please fork the repository at GitHub before getting started
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* Start with creating separate branches for each of your new generators or features
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* You can merge them into your master branch to have them all in one place
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* Please continue your work in the branches and repeatedly merge them to master
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* Before submitting a pull request intened to go upstream have clean patches that are self contained and error free
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* Re-order and squash patches with *git rebase -i*
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* The patches should contaning meaningful changes and not (nessesarily) reflect how the code was created
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* Rebase your branch to the current master branch
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* Be prepared that you code may get reworked before being merged upstream
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* Submit a pull request in GitHub based on your feature branch
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* Describe the status of the patch set and your intentions with it in the pull request message
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If you want to discuss your idea open a ticket describing it and ask
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questions there. This is encouraged even if you think you know what
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you want to do. There are many short cuts in Boxes.py and pointing you
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in the right direction may save you a lot of work.
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If you want feed back on you code feel free to open a PR. State that
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this is work in progress in the PR message. It's OK if it does not
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follow the guide lines (yet).
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Writing new Generators
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......................
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Writing new generators is the most straight forward thing to do with
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Boxes.py. Here are some guidelines that make it easier to get them added:
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* Start with a copy of another generator or *boxes/generators/_template.py*
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* Commit changes to the library in separate patches
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* Use parameters with sane defaults instead of hard coding dimmensions
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* Simple generators can end up as one single commit
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* For more complicated generators there can be multiple patches -
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each adding another feature
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Improving the Documentation
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---------------------------
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Boxes.py comes with Sphinx based documentation that is in large parts
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generated from the doc strings in the code. Nevertheless documentation
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has a tendency to get outdated. If you encounter outdated pieces of
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documentation feel free to submit a pull request or open a ticket
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pointing out what should be changed or even suggesting a better text.
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To get the docs updated the docs need to be build with *make html* in
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*documentation/src*. This places the compliled documentation in
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*documentation/build/html*.
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The online documentation gets build and updated automatically by the Travis CI
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as soon as the changes makes it into the GitHub master branch.
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Improving the User Interface
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----------------------------
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Coming up with good names and good descriptions is hard. Often writing
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a new generator is much easier than coming up with a good name for it
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and its arguments. If you think something deserves a better name or
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description and you can come up with one please don't hesitate to open
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a ticket. It is this small things that make something like Boxes.py
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easy or hard to use.
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There is also an - often empty - space for a longer text for each
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generator that could house assembling instructions, instructions for
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use or just more detailed descriptions. If you are interested in
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writing some please open a ticket. Your text does not have to be
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perfect. We can work on it together.
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Reporting bugs
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--------------
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If you encounter issues with Boxes.py, please open a ticket at
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GitHub. Please provide all information necessary to reproduce the
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bug. Often this can be the URL of the broken result. If the issue is
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easy to spot it may be sufficient to just give a brief
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description. Otherwise it can be helpful to attach the resulting SVG,
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a screen shot or the error message. Add a "bug" tag to draw additional
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attention.
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Suggesting new generators or features
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-------------------------------------
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If you have an idea for a new generator or feature please open a
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ticket. Give some short rational how or where you would use such a
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thing. Try to give a precise description how it should look like and
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which features and details are important. The less is left open the
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easier it is to implement. You can add an "enhancement" tag.
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