👍🎉 First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! 🎉👍
We welcome contributions via both the raising of issues and submitting pull requests. But before you do, please take a moment to consult the below.
If before any of the below you'd like to discuss an issue or some code, then come and chat with us on one of the following platforms:
- Users mailing list - Most active, best for more usage centric questions
- Developer mailing list - For discussing work on the code
- #Equella channel in Apereo's slack
When you submit an issue, please take the time to provide as much info as you can. Key bits are:
- What operating system
- What Java version
- What browser version
- A concise description of your issue
- More details of the issue, including any error logs etc.
As per standard Apereo projects: If you wish to contribute to openEQUELLA itself, you should first subscribe to the openEQUELLA Google Group as outlined above and discuss your contributions with the other developers. You will also need to sign a Contributor License Agreement.
But after that, as per usual GitHub, please first fork the project and then branch off develop or a
stable branch (see below) to use a 'feature' branch. Branches should follow the naming convention of:
feature/<issue#>-<short_desc>
Or if for a bug, you can choose to:
bugfix/<issue#>-<short_desc>
For example:
feature/123-make_coffee
or:
bugfix/124-fix_burnt_coffee
If you're unsure which to use, default to using feature/<issue#>-<short_desc>.
Please ensure you provide quality commit messages, and in the PR please detail what testing you have undertaken. Also, ideally provide some tests as part of your PR and/or details of any manual tests you performed.
The project is mostly aligned with the Git Flow
workflow. Each new piece of work has a
new branch created. Code reviews/PRs then take place on this branch, which on completion are merged
back to develop.
There are a number of Git tools which provide Git Flow tooling. Most dedicated Git GUI's provide support (such as SourceTree and GitKraken), but perhaps the simplest approach (assuming you're comfortable with the Git CLI) is to install the gitflow git extension. Most linux distributions provide a package to install this (recommended).
With Git Flow this essentially means our develop branch is our unstable branch where we're working
towards the next version. And master is our currently stable branch. We also have historically
stable branches which we use for back porting and have the name format of stable-<version> -
e.g. stable-6.6.
Historically some branches did not follow that format, so if you're looking for an older version:
| Version | Branch |
|---|---|
| 6.6 | stable-6.6 |
| 6.5 | stable |
| 6.4 | 6.4 |
Subsequent revision releases are done from the matching stable branches. And if suitable,
fixes are merged to other versions - and especially to master.
NOTE: There are problems with building 6.4 as it still has references to the old commercial build environment. Effort was undertaken in 6.5 to remove these linkages.
Note: There are a couple of changes to the build process, and some discussion on Scala / Java and the frontend that should be understood when working on openEQUELLA code - please take a look at this Google Group thread and this issue ticket. This page will be updated once the React UI code is a bit more solidified.
Setup note for Ubuntu 20.04
Notice these instructions assume a person is starting with a fresh machine. Therefore there'll be additional information which may seem redundant to someone who already has a significantly established development machine.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install curlWe suggest using SDKMAN for installing (and managing multiple versions of) JDK, Scala, Gradle - any other JVM bits. Please follow the installation instructions provided by the tool.
Since January 2024, Java 21 is required to build openEQUELLA. Temurin is the recommended openJDK distribution. To install that with SDKMAN:
sdk install java 21.0.1-temWe suggest using NVM to manage different NodeJS versions. Please follow the installation instructions provided by the tool.
openEQUELLA has a .nvmrc in the root of its repository, as a result installation of the correct version of NodeJS and NPM is as simple as
running the following when in the root of your openEQUELLA clone:
nvm install
To run openEQUELLA locally for development and testing, you'll need a local database. By far the easiest to setup is PostgreSQL. The two main ways to do this are:
- Simply install the package as part of your distro; or
- (Recommended) run an instance in docker to keep it nice and self contained.
Once you have an instance running, make sure you create a database with a user for access:
CREATE DATABASE equella;
CREATE USER equellauser WITH PASSWORD 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE "equella" to equellauser;
https://packages.ubuntu.com/impish/build-essential
It will install everything required for compiling basic software written in C and C++. We do need this to build openEquella.
sudo apt-get install build-essentialA suite of software (and specifically, command line tools) used by openEQUELLA for querying and manipulating image attachments. A key requirement for when contributing items with image attachments.
sudo apt install imagemagick
sudo apt install ffmpeg
Make sure everything is setup correctly and openEquella can be built on your machine.
cd /path/to/openEquella
setup node and npm version
nvm use
openEQUELLA provides a script to set up git pre-commit hooks to format the code you have modified before committing. To set it up you must run the installer once (from the root dir):
npm ciopenEQUELLA requires a configuration folder (learningedge-config) in order to start and there
is an sbt task which will generate configuration files suitable for running with your dev environment:
./sbt prepareDevConfigThis will create a configuration in the {openEQUELLA repo}/Dev/learningedge-config folder which you can
modify for your needs, in particular you will need to configure hibernate.properties to point to
the database that you have created for openEQUELLA.
The default admin url will be: http://localhost:8080/
When running the server in dev mode, the server runner doesn't have access to the SBT build
information, so it can't find the jar libraries which some of the plugins require, so an extra SBT
task is required to copy the jars into a known location for the runner. This task is run by the
prepareDevConfig task too.
./sbt jpfWriteDevJarsWhen you build openEQUELLA from within IntelliJ, it will only compile Scala/Java sources and copy resources from the resource folders, it won't run any of the scripts that generate resoureces (such as compile code to Javascript), in order to do this you can run:
./sbt resourcesEnsure you have your Dev/learningedge-config setup.
./sbt compile equellaserver/runAlternatively you can run the server from your IDE by running the class:
com.tle.core.equella.runner.EQUELLAServer
Inside the Source/Server/equellaserver project.
Ensure that your runner settings compiles the whole project before running:
- IntelliJ -
Before Launch -> Build Project
Once you have successfully started the server with the above commands, you can then launch the Admin Console to manage it. To do so from the command line with SBT, run:
./sbt compile adminTool/runor run com.tle.client.harness.ClientLauncher in the Source/Server/adminTool project.
To create the various distribution packages (installer / upgrader):
./sbt installerZipThere are two key parts of JS/TS code in openEQUELLA. There is the code for the New UI which is a React based SPA; and then there is the legacy JS code which supports AJAX functions when the system is in Legacy UI mode.
The New UI consists of two modules:
- The React based SPA located in the
react-front-enddirectory; and - The REST Module which is located in the
oeq-ts-rest-apidirectory.
For the most part, if you wish to work on the new UI, you need go into oeq-ts-rest-api directory and execute:
npm ci
npm run buildAfter building the REST module (oeq-ts-rest-api), then you can go into the react-front-end directory and execute:
npm ci
npm run devThe run dev command will build the React App and place the output into the directory from which
openEQUELLA serves its web resources.
Further to this, you may also wish to utilise the Storybook setup when working on UI components. This can be done by:
npm run storybookOnce built, it will launch the endpoint for Storybook into your browser.
Lastly, to run the Jest tests, you can go into either of the modules directories and run:
npm run test(NOTE: to run the tests for the REST module you need a locally running instance of openEQUELLA with the required institutions.)
In the Source/Plugins/Core/com.equella.core/resource/web/js directory you will find the JS code
used by the various Legacy UI pages which have AJAX functionality. Further in
Source/Plugins/Core/com.equella.core/test/js you will find the unit test setup for any of the
newer JS files.
There are also a couple of other places which utilise JS, TS and even Purescript. The main ones being:
- The support for Swagger UI at
Source/Plugins/Core/com.equella.core/swaggerui - The IntegTester used for the integration tests and found at
/autotest/IntegTester/front-end
The source isn't tied to a particular IDE, so it should be buildable with any IDE which has an SBT integration. Having said that IntelliJ is what most developers are using.
To install it, follow the instructions provided by JetBrains at https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/installation-guide.html
Import as an SBT project and use the default settings.
If you get compile errors in the IDE, but standalone ./sbt compile works, do an sbt refresh from the
IntelliJ SBT tool window.
Due to the heavy memory requirements of the SBT based build, it is recommended to setup IntelliJ's maximum heap to 4GiB. Documentation on how to do this can be found at https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/increasing-memory-heap.html.
In order to speed up the IDE. We recommend only enable relevant plugins. But make sure you enable the Scala plugin as well as support for Typescript and Gradle (you have Java by default).
Plugins can be configured in File -> settings -> Plugins.
You must use the sbteclipse plug-in to write projects out Eclipse projects and you must configure it with the following settings:
import com.typesafe.sbteclipse.plugin.EclipsePlugin._
EclipseKeys.withBundledScalaContainers := false
EclipseKeys.createSrc := EclipseCreateSrc.Default + EclipseCreateSrc.ManagedClasses
EclipseKeys.eclipseOutput := Some("target/scala-2.11/classes/")
All code should be formatted using the following tools. Assuming you've followed the above steps to install the pre-commit hooks this will be done automatically for you at commit time. However, if you don't, then the CI pipelines will fail for your pull requests.
- Scala - scalafmt
- Java - Google Java Format
- Typescript/JS/Markdown/YAML + more... - Prettier
Each formatter has various IDE plugins, in particular IntelliJ is well supported:
- Google Java Format
- scalafmt is built in
- Prettier
Some aspects of the build can be configured by editing the build.conf file. This is typically though only done for CI builds.
A keystore with a certificate is required to sign some of the jars in order for them to escape the Java sandbox.
By default the build will generate a self signed key which will show security warnings when launching.
In order to prevent this you will need to have a properly signed certificate and configure the build to use it.
In the build.conf file you can modify the parameters to configure your own keystore:
signer {
keystore = "/path/to/.keystore"
storePassword = "<storepasswd>"
keyPassword = "<optional>" # defaults to storePassword
alias = "<keyalias>"
}
IMPORTANT: A self registered certificate implies that the jars won't be secured and a security exception will appear when trying to launch the jars. To avoid this it is needed to add the domain you want to trust as a security exception in your java configuration. It can be done with the Java Control Panel or directly adding the domain in a new line in this file: ${user.home}/.java/deployment/security/exception.sites
The new build uses SBT (very flexible and has a large set of useful plug-ins available). You can customize pretty much any aspect of your build process using Scala scripts.
Plug-ins are global to the build but can be turned on/off on a per project basis.
The root build is located in the following files:
build.sbtproject/*.scalaproject/plugins.sbt
Located in the "project" folder is a series of SBT AutoPlugins which are responsible for replicating some of what the ant build used to do:
JPFScanPlugin- scanning for plug-in projectsJPFPlugin- default folder layout and settings for JPF plug-in projectsJPFRunnerPlugin- collecting plug-ins for deployment or running
The root plug-in manually defines the sub-project location and their inter-project dependencies:
equellaserver- contains the server bootstrap code and contains the dependency list for the server, produces the upgrade zipInstallerZip- produces the installer zipUpgradeZip- produces the upgrade zipUpgradeInstallation- the installation upgrader which is part of the upgrade zipUpgradeManager- the upgrade manager web appconversion- the conversion serviceallPlugins- an aggregate project which can be used for building all the JPF plug-insadminTool- contains the admin console client launcher
If you get a deduplicate dependencies on commons logging, SLF4J has a moonlighting jar that says it's commons logging. Use the build.sbt directive of exclude dependencies like the adminConsole does.