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Contribution guidelines

These guidelines instruct how to submit issues and contribute code to the Robot Framework Assistant project.

Table of Contents

Submitting issues

Bugs and enhancements are tracked in the issue tracker. If you are unsure if something is a bug or is a feature worth implementing, you can first ask on robotframework-users. mailing list or Slack. These and other similar forums, not the issue tracker, are also places where to ask general questions.

Before submitting a new issue, it is always a good idea to check is the same bug or enhancement already reported. If it is, please add your comments to the existing issue instead of creating a new one.

Reporting bugs

Explain the bug you have encountered so that others can understand it and preferably also reproduce it. Key things to have in good bug report:

  1. Version information

    • Sublime version
    • Plugin version
    • Robot Framework version
    • Operating system name and version

  2. Steps to reproduce the problem. With more complex problems it is often a good idea to create a short, self contained, correct example (SSCCE).

  3. Possible error message and traceback.

    • When internal database is created and updated, a log file is created, by default, in the plugin installation directory, in the database folder.
    • It is good idea to check the Sublime console for a traceback.

Notice that all information in the issue tracker is public. Do not include any confidential information there.

Enhancement requests

Describe the new feature and use cases for it in as much detail as possible. Especially with larger enhancements, be prepared to contribute the code in form of a pull request as explained below or to pay someone for the work. Consider also would it be better to implement this functionality as a separate tool outside the core plugin.

Code contributions

If you have fixed a bug or implemented an enhancement, you can contribute your changes via GitHub's pull requests. This is not restricted to code, on the contrary, fixes and enhancements to documentation_ and tests_ alone are also very valuable.

Choosing something to work on

Often you already have a bug or an enhancement you want to work on in your mind, but you can also look at the issue tracker to find bugs and enhancements submitted by others. The issues vary significantly in complexity and difficulty, so you can try to find something that matches your skill level and knowledge.

Pull requests

On GitHub pull requests are the main mechanism to contribute code. They are easy to use both for the contributor and for person accepting the contribution, and with more complex contributions it is easy also for others to join the discussion. Preconditions for creating a pull requests are having a GitHub account installing Git and forking the Robot Framework Assistant project.

GitHub has good articles explaining how to set up Git, fork a repository and use pull requests and we do not go through them in more detail. We do, however, recommend to create dedicated branches for pull requests instead of creating them based on the master branch. This is especially important if you plan to work on multiple pull requests at the same time.

Coding conventions

General guidelines

Robot Framework Assistant uses the general Python code conventions defined in PEP-8. In addition to that, we try to write idiomatic Python with all new code. An important guideline is that the code should be clear enough that comments are generally not needed.

Code that directly uses Sublime Text API, must be compatible with Python 3.3. This mostly includes code in the commands and setting folders. This is required because the Sublime Text 3 contains internal version of Python 3.3 which is used for API calls.

All code the dataparser folder must support the Python 2 and Python 3. The plugin uses latest versions of Robot Framework API to parse the test data and libraries. And the latest Robot Framework versions support both Python 2 and Python 3.

The command_helper folder also needs support for Python 2 and Python 3. The Python 2 support is required because the unit tests are run in Travis with Python 2. The Python 3 support is required, because the modules in command_helper folder are used by plugin commands.

Whitespace

We are pretty picky about using whitespace. We use blank lines and whitespace in expressions as dictated by PEP-8, but we also follow these rules:

  • Indentation using spaces, not tabs.
  • No trailing spaces.
  • No extra empty lines at the end of the file.
  • Files must end with a newline.

The above rules are good with most other code too. Any decent editor or IDE can be configured to automatically format files according to them.

Docstrings

Docstrings should be added when needed to clarify functionality. At least classes should have documentation what the class is used for. When docstrings are added, they should follow PEP-257.

Tests

When submitting a pull request with a new feature or a fix, you should always include tests for your changes. These tests prove that your changes work, help prevent bugs in the future, and help document what your changes do. Depending an the change, you may need unit tests, acceptance tests or both.

Make sure to run all of the tests before submitting a pull request to be sure that your changes do not break anything. If you can, test in multiple environments. (Windows, Linux and OS X). Pull requests are also automatically tested on Travis.

Acceptance tests

There are very little acceptance test for the plugin and Robot Framework is used to run the test. Most of the features should not be tested with acceptance tests.

Unit tests

Unit tests are great for testing internal logic and should be added when appropriate. It is not possible directly to test sublime commands. Instead the feature functionality should be divided in such way that the command core functionality does not require use the Sublime Text API. The command core functionality should be unit tested.

Finalizing pull requests

Once you have code, documentation and tests ready, it is time to finalize the pull request.

AUTHORS.txt

If you have done any non-trivial change and would like to be credited, add yourself to AUTHORS.txt file.

Resolving conflicts

Conflicts can occur if there are new changes to the master that touch the same code as your changes. In that case you should sync your fork and resolve conflicts to allow for an easy merge.

The most common conflicting file is the aforementioned AUTHORS.txt, but luckily fixing those conflicts is typically easy.

Squashing commits

If the pull request contains multiple commits, it is recommended that you squash them into a single commit before the pull request is merged. See ` Squashing Github pull requests into a single commit article for more details about why and how.

Squashing is especially important if the pull request contains lots of temporary commits and changes that have been later reverted or redone. Squashing is not needed if the commit history is clean and individual commits are meaningful alone.