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PREACTION / CPAN-Testers-API-0.025 / CONTRIBUTING.md

CONTRIBUTING

This project is free software for the express purpose of collaboration. We welcome all input, bug reports, feature requests, general comments, and patches.

Communication

If you're not sure about anything, please open an issue on Github issues and ask, or ask the CPAN Testers Discuss mailing list, or e-mail the project leader preaction@cpan.org or talk to us on IRC on irc.perl.org channel #cpantesters-discuss!

Standard of Conduct

To ensure a welcoming, safe, collaborative environment, this project will enforce a standard of conduct:

Unacceptable behavior will receive a single, public warning. Repeated unacceptable behavior will result in removal from the project.

Remember, all the people who contribute to this project are volunteers.

About this Project

The CPAN Testers project is an effort to ensure the stability and reliability of Perl and CPAN by running the test suites of uploaded CPAN distributions on various Perl versions, OSes, and hardware; collecting the results in a database; and alerting distribution authors when there is a test failure.

Project Goals

The CPAN Testers API is a JSON API on to the data stored in the CPAN Testers database. The goal of this subproject is to be an easily-consumable API so that users can build their own tools around CPAN Testers data. This subproject is also a communication hub for the disparate parts of the CPAN Testers data pipeline, and allows users to tap into that communication to receive immediate data updates.

Repository Layout

This project follows CPAN conventions with some additions, explained below.

lib/

Modules are located in the lib/ directory. Most of the functionality of the project should be in a module. If the functionality should be available to users from a script, the script should call the module.

lib/CPAN/Testers/API.pm

This is the main application class. This project uses the Mojolicious web framework. The main startup routines are located in this file: reading the API spec (see below), locating the template directory (see below), and setting up additional routes and helpers.

lib/CPAN/Testers/API/Controller/

This is where API controllers are kept. Each controller handles a section of the API, and API routes are linked from the API specification in share/api.json (see below) to a controller name and method using the x-mojo-to key in the API spec.

bin/

Command-line scripts go in the bin/ directory. Most of the real functionality of these should be in a library, but these scripts must call the library function and document the command-line interface.

t/

All the tests are located in the t/ directory. See "Getting Started" below for how to build the project and run its tests.

xt/

Any extra tests that are not to be bundled with the CPAN module and run by consumers is located here. These tests are run at release time and may test things that are expensive or esoteric.

share/

Any files that are not runnable code but must still be available to the code are stored in share/. This includes default config files, default content, informational files, read-only databases, and other such. This project uses File::Share to locate these files at run-time.

share/api.json

This is the OpenAPI specification for the CPAN Testers API. This JSON document documents each API endpoint, the input it can receive, the output it will send, and any error conditions that might occur. This API documentation is then displayed using SwaggerUI (via Alien::SwaggerUI) at http://api.cpantesters.org.

Every new API endpoint must be started and documented here. This document is used by Mojolicious::Plugin::OpenAPI to generate the Mojolicious routes and validate the input and output automatically. Each route should have an x-mojo-to key to link it to a controller (class) and action (method). It should also have an operationId that is globally unique for all API files.

share/templates

This is where Mojolicious templates should go. The templates are located after install using File::Share.

share/public

This is where extra, ancillary files should go (like CSS, JavaScript, and images). These files are located after install using File::Share.

Rexfile

This file contains all the Rex tasks to deploy this project to CPAN Testers servers (or development VMs). This Rexfile coordinates with the CPAN Testers deploy project (which prepares a machine for a specific role) to allow deploying the application with minimal privileges.

etc/

This directory contains additional things that aren't examples (which would go in eg/), but also must not be part of the CPAN distribution (which would go in share/).

etc/runit/

These are runit service files used by CPAN Testers to run the API daemon and the Mercury daemon (a websocket message broker).

What to Contribute

Comments

The issue tracker is used for both bug reports and to-do list. Anything on the issue tracker, open or closed, is available for discussion.

Fixes

For fixes, simply fork and send a pull request. Fixes to anything, documentation, code, tests, are equally welcome, appreciated, and addressed!

If you are fixing a bug in the code, please add a regression test to ensure it stays fixed in the future.

Features

All contributions are welcome if they fit the scope of this project. If you're not sure if your feature fits, open an issue and ask. If it doesn't fit, we will try to find a way to enable you to add your feature in a related project (if it means changes in this project).

When contributing a feature, please add some basic functionality tests to ensure the feature is working properly. These tests do not need to be comprehensive or paranoid, but must at least demonstrate that the feature is working as documented.

Getting Started Building and Running Tests

This project uses Dist::Zilla for its releases, but you aren't required to use it for contributing.

These instructions do require you have App::cpanminus (cpanm) installed. cpanm is a CPAN client to install Perl modules and programs. You can install cpanm by doing:

curl -L https://cpanmin.us | perl - App::cpanminus

Or, if you (not incorrectly) do not trust that, by using the existing cpan client that comes with Perl:

cpan App::cpanminus

You may need to be root or Administrator to install cpanminus.

This project also requires Perl version 5.24. If your Perl is not recent enough, you can install a new version of Perl in a local directory by using perlbrew (the easiest option) or plenv.

Using cpanm to install prereqs

The cpanm command is the easiest way to install this project's dependencies. In the root of the project, just run cpanm --installdeps . and the dependencies will be installed.

Using carton to install prereqs in an isolated directory

If you with to isolate the prerequisites of this project so they do not interfere with other projects, you can use the Carton tool. Install Carton normally from CPAN using cpanm Carton, then use the carton command to install this module's prereqs in the local/ directory:

carton install

Once the prereqs are installed, you can use carton exec prove -lr t to run all the tests with the right prereqs. Putting carton exec in front of the command makes sure Perl uses the right library directories.

Using prove to run tests

Perl comes with a utility called prove which runs tests and gives a report on failures. To run the test suite with prove, do:

prove -lr t

This will run all the tests in the t directory, recursively, while adding the current lib/ directory to the library path.

You can run individual test files more quickly by passing them as arguments to prove:

prove -l t/my-test.t

Using Dist::Zilla to install prereqs and run tests

Once you have installed Dist::Zilla via cpanm Dist::Zilla, you can get this distributions's dependencies by doing:

dzil listdeps --author --missing | cpanm

Once all that is done, testing is as easy as:

dzil test

Before you Submit Your Contribution

Copyright and License

All contributions are copyright their respective owners, so make sure you agree with the project license (found in the LICENSE file) before contributing.

The list of Contributors is calculated automatically from the Git commit log. If you do not wish to be listed as a contributor, or if you wish to be listed as a contributor with a different e-mail address, tell me so in the ticket or e-mail me at doug@preaction.me.

Code Formatting and Style

Please try to maintain the existing code formatting and style.

Documentation

Documentation is incredibly important, and contributions will not be accepted until documentated.

New Prerequisites

Though this project has a cpanfile, a Makefile.PL, and maybe even a Build.PL, these files are auto-generated and should not be edited. To add new prereqs, you must add them to the dist.ini file in the following sections:

If the section doesn't already exist, you can add it to the bottom of the dist.ini file.

The Recommends and TestRecommends will be automatically installed by Travis CI to test those parts of the code.

OS-specific prerequisites can be added using the Dist::Zilla::Plugin::OSPrereqs module.