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Contributing

  • Star the project on Github and help spread the word :)
  • Join our Slack group
  • Post an issue if you find any bugs
  • Contribute improvements or fixes using a Pull Request. If you're going to contribute, thank you! Please just be sure to:
    • discuss with the authors on an issue ticket prior to doing anything big.
    • follow the style, naming and structure conventions of the rest of the project.
    • make commits atomic and easy to merge.
    • when updating documentation, please see our guidance for documentation contributions.
    • verify all tests are passing. Build the project with ./gradlew check to do this. N.B. Gradle's Build Cache is enabled by default, but you can add --no-build-cache flag to disable it.

Contributing new modules

We often receive proposals (or fully formed PRs) for new modules. We're very happy to have contributions, but new modules require specific extra care. We want to balance:

  • Usefulness of the module.
  • Our ability to support the module in the future, potentially after contributors have moved on.
  • Contributors time, so that nobody puts in wasted effort.

Does it need to be a module?

N.B. this is not a perfect list - please always reach out to us before starting on a module contribution!

  • Does the module enable use of Testcontainers with a popular or rapidly growing technology?
  • Does the module 'add value' beyond a GenericContainer code snippet/example? e.g.
    • does it neatly encapsulate a difficult problem of running the program in a container?
    • does it add technology-specific wait strategies?
    • does it enable straightforward usage of client libraries?

If the answers to the above are all yes, then a new module may be a good approach.

Otherwise, it is entirely possible for you to:

  • publish a code snippet
  • contribute an example to the Testcontainers repo
  • publish your own third party library

In any case, please contact us to help validate your proposal!

Checklist

Suggestion: copy and paste this list into PRs for new modules.

Every item on this list will require judgement by the Testcontainers core maintainers. Exceptions will sometimes be possible; items with should are more likely to be negotiable than those items with must.

Default docker image

  • Should be a Docker Hub official image, or published by a reputable source (ideally the company or organisation that officially supports the technology)
  • Should have a verifiable open source Dockerfile and a way to view the history of changes
  • MUST show general good practices regarding container image tagging - e.g. we do not use latest tags, and we do not use tags that may be mutated in the future
  • MUST be legal for Testcontainers developers and Testcontainers users to pull and use. Mechanisms exist to allow EULA acceptance to be signalled, but images that can be used without a licence are greatly preferred.

Module dependencies

  • The module should use as few dependencies as possible,
  • Regarding libraries, either:
    • they should be compileOnly if they are likely to already be on the classpath for users' tests (e.g. client libraries or drivers)
    • they can be implementation (and thus transitive dependencies) if they are very unlikely to conflict with users' dependencies.
  • If client libraries are used to test or use the module, these MUST be legal for Testcontainers developers and Testcontainers users to download and use.

API (e.g. MyModuleContainer class)

  • Favour doing the right thing, and least surprising thing, by default
  • Ensure that method and parameter names are easy to understand. Many users will ignore documentation, so IDE-based substitutes (autocompletion and Javadocs) should be intuitive.
  • The module's public API should only handle standard JDK data types and MUST not expose data types that come from compileOnly dependencies. This is to reduce the risk of compatibility problems with future versions of third party libraries.

Documentation

  • Every module MUST have a dedicated documentation page containing:
    • A high level overview
    • A usage example
    • If appropriate, basic API documentation or further usage guidelines
    • Dependency information
    • Acknowledgements, if appropriate
  • Consider that many users will not read the documentation pages - even if the first person to add it to a project does, people reading/updating the code in the future may not. Try and avoid the need for critical knowledge that is only present in documentation.

Incubating modules

We have a policy of marking new modules as 'incubating' so that we can evaluate its maintainability and usability traits over a longer period of time. We currently believe 3 months is a fair period of time, but may change this.

New modules should have the following warning at the top of their documentation pages:

!!! note This module is INCUBATING. While it is ready for use and operational in the current version of Testcontainers, it is possible that it may receive breaking changes in the future. See our contributing guidelines for more information on our incubating modules policy.

We will evaluate incubating modules periodically, and remove the label when appropriate.