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Contributing to MetacatUI

🎉 First off, thanks for contributing! 🎉

Types of contributions

We welcome all types of contributions, including bug fixes, feature enhancements, bug reports, documentation, graphics, and many others. You might consider contributing by:

  • Report a bug or request a new feature in our issue tracker
  • Fix a bug and contribute the code with a Pull Request
  • Write or edit some documentation
  • Sharing helpful tips or FAQ-type answers to users or future contributors
  • Create screenshots or tutorials of features of MetacatUI
  • Answer questions on our mailing list or Slack team
  • ...

MetacatUI is an open source project, and we welcome full participation in the project. Contributions are reviewed and suggestions are made to increase the value of MetacatUI to the community. We strive to incorporate code, documentation, and other useful contributions quickly and efficiently while maintaining a high-quality repository software product.

Pull Requests

We use the pull-request model for contributions. See GitHub's help on pull-requests.

In short:

  • add an issue describing your planned changes, or add a comment to an existing issue;
  • on GitHub, fork the MetacatUI repository
  • on your computer, clone your forked copy of the MetacatUI repository
  • checkout a development branch and commit your changes
  • push your branch to your forked repository, and submit a pull-request
  • our team will be notified of your Pull Request and will review your changes
  • our team may request changes before we will approve the Pull Request, or we will make them for you
  • once the code is reviewed, our team will merge in your changes and you're done!

Development Workflow

Development is managed through the git repository at https://github.com/NCEAS/metacatui. The repository is organized into several branches, each with a specific purpose.

main. Releases are merged from the develop branch to the main branch, and the resulting commit is tagged with the release tag (e.g., 2.4.0). The tip of the main branch always reflects the most recent release of the software. The version number in all configuration files and the README on the main branch follows semantic versioning and should always be set to the current release version, for example, 2.8.5.

develop. The develop branch is a stable branch that is constantly maintained in a state ready for release. Commits should only be pushed to this branch once they are ready to be deployed to production immediately after being pushed. Any unreleased code changes on the develop branch represent changes that have been tested and staged for the next release. The tip of the develop branch always represents the set of features that have been staged for the next release. Commits are added to the develop branch via a pull request or after consultation with the designated MetacatUI product owner.

feature. to isolate development on a specific set of capabilities, especially if it may be disruptive to other developers working on the main develop branch, feature branches should be created.

Feature branches are named as feature- + #{issue} + -{short-description}-. With {issue} being the Github issue number related to that new feature. e.g. feature-#1456-new-search.

All feature-* branches should be frequently merged with changes from develop to ensure that the feature branch stays up to date with other features that have been tested and are awaiting release. Thus, each feature-* branch represents an opportunity for integration testing of the set of features intended to work together for a particular release.

dev-X.X. Development branches named after their minor version number can be used when a patch release needs to be created that is behind the main develop branch.

bugfix. A final branch type are bugfix branches, which work the same as feature branches, but fix bugs rather than adding new functionality. Bugfix branches are named similarly, following the pattern: bugfix- + {issue} + -{short-description}, with {issue} being the GitHub issue number related to that bug. e.g. bugfix-83-fix-name-display.

Development flow overview

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gitGraph
    commit id: "1" tag: "v1.0.0"
    branch develop
    checkout develop
    commit id: "2"
    branch feature-A
    commit id: "3"
    commit id: "4"
    checkout develop
    merge feature-A id: "5"
    commit id: "6"
    commit id: "7"
    branch feature-B
    commit id: "8"
    commit id: "9"
    checkout develop
    merge feature-B  id: "10" type: NORMAL
    checkout main
    merge develop id: "11" tag: "v1.1.0"
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Release process

  1. Our release process starts with integration testing in a develop branch. Once all changes that are desired in a release are merged into the develop branch, we run the full set of tests on a clean checkout of the develop branch.
  2. After testing, the develop branch is merged to main.
  3. Then the main branch can be tagged with the new version number (e.g. 2.11.2).
  4. Releases can be downloaded from the Github releases page for the MetacatUI repository.

Testing

Unit and integration tests. MetacatUI has a full suite of unit tests and integration tests in the tests subdirectory. Any new code developed should include a robust set of unit tests for each public method, as well as integration tests from new feature sets. Tests should fully exercise the feature to ensure that it responds correctly to both good data inputs and various classes of corrupt or bad data. All tests should pass before submitting a PR or merging to develop.

Tests are automatically run via GitHub Actions. Check the root README.md file for this GitHub Actions status badge and make sure it says "Passing":

Tests Status

Read more documentation about how tests are run and viewed in /test/README.md

Code style

Code should be written to professional standards to enable clean, well-documented, readable, and maintainable software. While there has been significant variability in the coding styles applied historically, new contributions should strive for clean code formatting. Some of the guidelines we follow include:

Documentation

All JavaScript code should be fully documented with JSDoc comments.

For Models and Views:

  • Gives a brief overview of what the class / file does and give a few short example of how you might use the class / file.
  • Create a screenshot of the View and use the @screenshot tag to include it in the built docs.
  • Use the @classcategory tag to organize the class file in the built docs navigational menu

For Model and View methods:

  • Say what each class method does and how to use it (use @param and @returns)
  • Use @example tags to give examples of parameters and return values
  • Use @fires to indicate Backbone Events that are fired by a method

For Model and View attributes:

  • Describe the purpose of the attribute, its @default value, and one or more @examples

For everything:

  • Use the @since tag to indicate the version the class/method/attribute was added
  • Use @deprecated for deprecated APIs and features
  • Use @link to link to other JSDoc pages when mentioning other classes, attributes, and methods (e.g. {@link Model#method})

Before merging a feature branch to the develop branch, build the MetacatUI documentation website and make sure that your documentation is displaying correctly and is thorough.

Things to check:

  • There are no JSDoc build errors or warnings
  • The class shows up in the right category in the class navigation menu
  • All class methods and attributes are documented and displaying correctly
  • Screenshots of views are displaying correctly

Contributor license agreement

In order to clarify the intellectual property license granted with Contributions from any person or entity, you agree to a Contributor License Agreement ("CLA") with the Regents of the University of California (hereafter, the "Regents").

  1. Definitions. "You" (or "Your") shall mean the copyright owner or legal entity authorized by the copyright owner that is making this Agreement with the Regents. For legal entities, the entity making a Contribution and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity are considered to be a single Contributor. For the purposes of this definition, "control" means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity. "Contribution" shall mean any original work of authorship, including any modifications or additions to an existing work, that is intentionally submitted by You to the Regents for inclusion in, or documentation of, any of the products owned or managed by the Regents (the "Work"). For the purposes of this definition, "submitted" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Regents or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the Regents for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by You as "Not a Contribution."
  2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Regents and to recipients of software distributed by the Regents a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works.
  3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Regents and to recipients of software distributed by the Regents a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by You that are necessarily infringed by Your Contribution(s) alone or by combination of Your Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If any entity institutes patent litigation against You or any other entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that your Contribution, or the Work to which you have contributed, constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to that entity under this Agreement for that Contribution or Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
  4. You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the above license. If your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property that you create that includes your Contributions, you represent that you have received permission to make Contributions on behalf of that employer, that your employer has waived such rights for your Contributions to the Regents, or that your employer has executed a separate Corporate CLA with the Regents.
  5. You represent that each of Your Contributions is Your original creation (see section 7 for submissions on behalf of others). You represent that Your Contribution submissions include complete details of any third-party license or other restriction (including, but not limited to, related patents and trademarks) of which you are personally aware and which are associated with any part of Your Contributions.