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Contributing to OpenLMIS

Contributing to OpenLMIS is what delivers a shared, open source solution for managing medical commodity distribution in low- and middle-income countries. Your contributions are needed! Before you get started, take a moment to read this quick guide, get to know the community and join in on the developer forum.

Reporting Bugs

The OpenLMIS community uses JIRA for tracking bugs. This system helps track current and historical bugs, what work has been done, and so on. Reporting a bug with this tool is the best way to get the bug fixed quickly and correctly.

Before you report a bug

  • Search to see if the same bug or a similar one has already been reported. If one already exists it saves you time in reporting it again and the community from investigating it twice.
  • If the bug exists but has been closed, check to see which version of OpenLMIS it was fixed on and which version you are using. If it is fixed in a newer version you may want to upgrade. If you can't upgrade you may need to ask on the technical forums.
  • If the bug doesn't appear to be fixed, you may ask to re-open the bug report or file a new one.

Reporting a new bug

Fixing bugs is a time-intensive process. To speed things along and assist in fixing the bug, it greatly helps to send in a complete, accurate and well thought out bug report. These steps can help that along:

  1. First make sure you search for the bug! It takes a lot of work to report and investigate bug reports so please do this first. See above.
  2. A clear and concise description of what you saw, as well as a description of what you thought you should see from the feature.
  3. Detailed steps that someone unfamiliar with the bug can use to recreate it. Make sure this bug occurs on different personal computers, servers, web-browsers, etc.
  4. The web-browser (e.g. FireFox), version (e.g. v40), OpenLMIS version, as well as any custom modifications made.
  5. Your priority in fixing this bug!
  6. If applicable the output of any stacktrace, or logging output
  7. If possible and relevant, a sample or view of the database - though don't post sensitive information in public

Example Bug Report

R&R not being saved
OpenLMIS v2.0, Postgres 9.2, FireFox v40, Windows 10

When attempting to save my in progress R&R for the Essential Medicines program for the reporting period of Jan 2015,
I get an error at the bottom of the screen that says "Whoops something went wrong"

Steps:

1. login

2. goto Requistions->Create/Authorize

3. Select My Facility (Facility F3020A - Steinbach Hospital)

4. Select Essential Medicines Program

5. Select Regular type

6. Click Create for the Jan 2015 period

7. Fill in some basic requested items, or not, it makes no difference in the error

8. Click the Save button in the bottom of the screen

9. See the error in red at the bottom.

I expected this to save my R&R, regardless of completion, so that I may resume it later.

Please see attached screenshots, log output and database snapshot.

Feature Roadmap

The Living Roadmap can be found here: https://openlmis.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OP/Living+Product+Roadmap The backlog can be found here: https://openlmis.atlassian.net/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=33&projectKey=OLMIS&view=planning&selectedIssue=OLMIS-65&epics=visible

Contributing Code

The OpenLMIS community welcomes code contributions and we encourage you to fix a bug or implement a new feature.
However we also need to make sure that contributions keep in mind existing implementations and the needs of a Logistics Management Information System that works in many different localities and programs. To that end, when considering a new feature or modification, please:

  1. Review your feature with the community
  2. Before modifying core functionality, check with the technical community. We prefer building in extension points, which are simply hooks or Strategies to enable different behavior while maintaining compatibility. The tech group can help advise how best to do this.

To enable OpenLMIS to keep a rapid pace of development while allowing for country custimizations, we are in the process of splitting the software into two products:

  • Core - is a collection of the most widely followed functionality and therefore special attention is paid to maintaining backwards compatibility. You should not fork this! If you need to change functionality here, be sure to ask on the developer forums and if apporpriate will rapidly help build an extension point in core for you to utilize without forking.

  • Reference Distribution - is what utilizes Core to provide a useable and extendable application. The Reference Distribution (RD) is what implementor's deploy to run their logistics system and what developers can utilize to develop custom modules for.

Developing A New Module

New features should be developed in a module. For now OpenLMIS v2 is adopting a short-term approach to managing module repositories using git-repo. In short this process involves:

  1. Setting up git-repo and using it to manage OpenLMIS & module sources. See:
  2. Developing your new module in it's own repository.
  3. Utilizing git-repo and local-manifests to manage contributions to these different repositories.
  4. Collaborating on creating extension points in existing OpenLMIS code. See the Extension Point Fast Track section.

What's not accepted

  • Code that breaks the build or disables / removes needed tests to pass
  • Code that doesn't pass our Quality Gate - see the Style Guide and Sonar.
  • Code that belongs in a Module but was added to Core or vice versa
  • Code that might break existing implementations - sometimes we might have to leave an implementation behind, but the community needs to know about it first!
  • Changes to some specific style preference - if you can't change it all at once or someone disagrees with your whitespace preferences, it won't be accepted. It's better to just stick with what's already there.

Git, Branching & Pull Requests

The OpenLMIS community employs several code-management techniques to help develop the software, enable contributions, discuss & review and pull the community together. The first is that OpenLMIS code is managed using Git and is always publicly hosted on GitHub and we encourage everyone working on the code-base to take advantage of GitHub's fork and pull-request model to track what's going on. Second we follow, as needed, a git branching strategy based on Vincent Driessen's A Successful Git branching model which we encourage contributors to follow as well to ease the task of reviewing and accepting contribution submissions.

We utilize the following branches:

  • master - is where all OpenLMIS stable releases are. Code here is of the highest quality for the project and is ready to be used in an implementation. Pull requests should not be made against this branch. If a bug fix is needed on a released version, a pull request should be made to that version's release branch.
  • dev - is where all active development occurs. Code that's here should always build and pass tests, however it may not be stable and it is not suitable yet for a release. Contributions for the next release should be made here via pull requests.

The general flow:

  1. Communicate using JIRA, the wiki, or the developer forums!

  2. Fork the OpenLMIS project on GitHub

  3. Branch from the dev branch to do your work

  4. Commit early and often to your branch

  5. Re-base your branch often from OpenLMIS dev branch

  6. Issue a Pull Request back to the dev branch - explain what you did and keep it brief to speed review! Mention the JIRA ticket number (e.g., "OLIMS-34") in the commit and pull request messages to activate the JIRA/GitHub integration.

While developing your code, be sure you follow our style guide and keep your contribution specific to doing one thing.

Step by Step

TODO: need this but with details on module creation & repository locations

CI, CD and Demo Systems

TODO: add in links

Language Translations & Localized Implementations

TODO: insert links for Transifex and how we can support "global" translations as opposed to project based localizations

Licensing

OpenLMIS code is licensed under an open source license to enable everyone contributing to the code-base and the community to benefit collectively. As such all contributions have to be licensed using the OpenLMIS license to be accepted; no exceptions. Licensing code appropriately is simple:

Modifying existing code in a file

  • Add your name or your organization's name to the license header. e.g. if it reads copyright VillageReach, update it to copyright VillageReach, <insert name here>
  • Update the copyright year to a range. e.g. if it was 2014, update it to read 2014-2015

Adding new code in a new file

  • Copy the license file header template, LICENSE_HEADER, to the top of the new file.
  • Add the year and your name or your organization's name to the license header. e.g. if it reads Copyright © <INSERT YEAR AND COPYRIGHT HOLDER HERE>, update it to Copyright © 2016 MyOrganization

For complete licensing details be sure to reference the LICENSE file that comes with this project.

Referenced Links