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Contributing code to Sygnal

Everyone is welcome to contribute code to Sygnal, provided you are willing to license your contributions under the same license as the project itself. In this case, the Apache Software License v2.

Create a virtualenv

To contribute to Sygnal, ensure you have Python 3.7 or newer and then run:

python3 -m venv venv
./venv/bin/pip install -e '.[dev]'

This creates an isolated virtual Python environment ("virtualenv") just for use with Sygnal, then installs Sygnal along with its dependencies, and lastly installs a handful of useful tools

If you get ConnectTimeoutError, this is caused by slow internet whereby pip has a default time out of 15 sec. You can specify a larger timeout by passing --timeout 120 to the pip install command above.

Finally, activate the virtualenv by running:

source ./venv/bin/activate

Be sure to do this every time you open a new terminal window for working on Sygnal. Activating the venv ensures that any Python commands you run (pip, python, etc.) use the versions inside your venv, and not your system Python.

When you're done, you can close your terminal or run deactivate to disable the virtualenv.

Run the tests

To make sure everything is working as expected, run the unit tests:

tox -e py

If you see a message like:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 46 tests in 0.209s

PASSED (successes=46)
___________________________________ summary ___________________________________
  py: commands succeeded
  congratulations :)

Then all is well and you're ready to work!

How to contribute

The preferred and easiest way to contribute changes is to fork the relevant project on github, and then create a pull request to ask us to pull your changes into our repo.

Some other points to follow:

Code style

Sygnal follows the Synapse code style.

Many of the conventions are enforced by scripts which are run as part of the continuous integration system.

To help check and fix adherence to the code style, you can run tox locally. You'll need Python 3.7 or later, and a virtual environment configured and active:

# Activate the virtual environment
source ./venv/bin/activate

# Run the code style check
tox -e check_codestyle

# Run the types check
tox -e check_types

These commands will consider the paths and files related to the project (i.e. everything in sygnal/ and in tests/ as well as the setup.py file).

Before pushing new changes, ensure they don't produce linting errors. Commit any files that were corrected.

Please ensure your changes match the cosmetic style of the existing project, and never mix cosmetic and functional changes in the same commit, as it makes it horribly hard to review otherwise.

Changelog

All changes, even minor ones, need a corresponding changelog / newsfragment entry. These are managed by Towncrier.

To create a changelog entry, make a new file in the changelog.d directory named in the format of PRnumber.type. The type can be one of the following:

  • feature
  • bugfix
  • docker (for updates to the Docker image)
  • doc (for updates to the documentation)
  • removal (also used for deprecations)
  • misc (for internal-only changes)

This file will become part of our changelog at the next release, so the content of the file should be a short description of your change in the same style as the rest of the changelog. The file can contain Markdown formatting, and should end with a full stop (.) or an exclamation mark (!) for consistency.

Adding credits to the changelog is encouraged, we value your contributions and would like to have you shouted out in the release notes!

For example, a fix in PR #1234 would have its changelog entry in changelog.d/1234.bugfix, and contain content like:

The security levels of Florbs are now validated when received via the /federation/florb endpoint. Contributed by Jane Matrix.

If there are multiple pull requests involved in a single bugfix/feature/etc, then the content for each changelog.d file should be the same. Towncrier will merge the matching files together into a single changelog entry when we come to release.

How do I know what to call the changelog file before I create the PR?

Obviously, you don't know if you should call your newsfile 1234.bugfix or 5678.bugfix until you create the PR, which leads to a chicken-and-egg problem.

There are two options for solving this:

  1. Open the PR without a changelog file, see what number you got, and then add the changelog file to your branch (see Updating your pull request), or:

  2. Look at the list of all issues/PRs, add one to the highest number you see, and quickly open the PR before somebody else claims your number.

    This script might be helpful if you find yourself doing this a lot.

Sorry, we know it's a bit fiddly, but it's really helpful for us when we come to put together a release!

Sign off

In order to have a concrete record that your contribution is intentional and you agree to license it under the same terms as the project's license, we've adopted the same lightweight approach that the Linux Kernel submitting patches process, Docker, and many other projects use: the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin: https://developercertificate.org/). This is a simple declaration that you wrote the contribution or otherwise have the right to contribute it to Matrix:

Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1

Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
660 York Street, Suite 102,
San Francisco, CA 94110 USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
    have the right to submit it under the open source license
    indicated in the file; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
    of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
    license and I have the right under that license to submit that
    work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
    by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
    permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
    in the file; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
    person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
    it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
    this project or the open source license(s) involved.

If you agree to this for your contribution, then all that's needed is to include the line in your commit or pull request comment:

Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@email.example.org>

We accept contributions under a legally identifiable name, such as your name on government documentation or common-law names (names claimed by legitimate usage or repute). Unfortunately, we cannot accept anonymous contributions at this time.

Git allows you to add this signoff automatically when using the -s flag to git commit, which uses the name and email set in your user.name and user.email git configs.

Continuous integration and testing

Buildkite will automatically run a series of checks and tests against any PR which is opened against the project; if your change breaks the build, this will be shown in GitHub, with links to the build results. If your build fails, please try to fix the errors and update your branch.

After installing tox with pip install tox, you can use the following to run unit tests and lints in a local development environment:

  • tox -e py37 to run unit tests on Python 3.7.
  • tox -e check_codestyle to check code style and formatting.
  • tox -e check_types to check types with MyPy.
  • tox to do all of the above.

Updating your pull request

If you decide to make changes to your pull request - perhaps to address issues raised in a review, or to fix problems highlighted by continuous integration - just add new commits to your branch, and push to GitHub. The pull request will automatically be updated.

Please avoid rebasing your branch, especially once the PR has been reviewed: doing so makes it very difficult for a reviewer to see what has changed since a previous review.

Conclusion

That's it! Matrix is a very open and collaborative project as you might expect given our obsession with open communication. If we're going to successfully matrix together all the fragmented communication technologies out there we are reliant on contributions and collaboration from the community to do so. So please get involved - and we hope you have as much fun hacking on Matrix as we do!