borg/docs/development.rst

.. include:: global.rst.inc
.. highlight:: bash
.. _development:

Development
===========

This chapter will get you started with |project_name| development.

|project_name| is written in Python (with a little bit of Cython and C for
the performance critical parts).

Contributions
-------------

... are welcome!

Some guidance for contributors:

- discuss about changes on github issue tracker, IRC or mailing list

- make your PRs on the ``master`` branch (see `Branching Model`_ for details)

- do clean changesets:

  - focus on some topic, resist changing anything else.
  - do not do style changes mixed with functional changes.
  - try to avoid refactorings mixed with functional changes.
  - if you need to fix something after commit/push:

    - if there are ongoing reviews: do a fixup commit you can
      merge into the bad commit later.
    - if there are no ongoing reviews or you did not push the
      bad commit yet: edit the commit to include your fix or
      merge the fixup commit before pushing.
  - have a nice, clear, typo-free commit comment
  - if you fixed an issue, refer to it in your commit comment
  - follow the style guide (see below)

- if you write new code, please add tests and docs for it

- run the tests, fix anything that comes up

- make a pull request on github

- wait for review by other developers

Branching model
---------------

Borg development happens on the ``master`` branch and uses GitHub pull
requests (if you don't have GitHub or don't want to use it you can
send smaller patches via the borgbackup :ref:`mailing_list` to the maintainers).

Stable releases are maintained on maintenance branches named x.y-maint, eg.
the maintenance branch of the 1.0.x series is 1.0-maint.

Most PRs should be made against the ``master`` branch. Only if an
issue affects **only** a particular maintenance branch a PR should be
made against it directly.

While discussing / reviewing a PR it will be decided whether the
change should be applied to maintenance branch(es). Each maintenance
branch has a corresponding *backport/x.y-maint* label, which will then
be applied.

Changes that are typically considered for backporting:

- Data loss, corruption and inaccessibility fixes
- Security fixes
- Forward-compatibility improvements
- Documentation corrections

.. rubric:: Maintainer part

From time to time a maintainer will backport the changes for a
maintenance branch, typically before a release or if enough changes
were collected:

1. Notify others that you're doing this to avoid duplicate work.
2. Branch a backporting branch off the maintenance branch.
3. Cherry pick and backport the changes from each labelled PR, remove
   the label for each PR you've backported.
4. Make a PR of the backporting branch against the maintenance branch
   for backport review. Mention the backported PRs in this PR, eg:

       Includes changes from #2055 #2057 #2381

   This way GitHub will automatically show in these PRs where they
   were backported.

.. rubric:: Historic model

Previously (until release 1.0.10) Borg used a `"merge upwards"
<https://git-scm.com/docs/gitworkflows#_merging_upwards>`_ model where
most minor changes and fixes where committed to a maintenance branch
(eg. 1.0-maint), and the maintenance branch(es) were regularly merged
back into the main development branch. This became more and more
troublesome due to merges growing more conflict-heavy and error-prone.

Code and issues
---------------

Code is stored on Github, in the `Borgbackup organization
<https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/>`_. `Issues
<https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues>`_ and `pull requests
<https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/pulls>`_ should be sent there as
well. See also the :ref:`support` section for more details.

Style guide
-----------

We generally follow `pep8
<https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/>`_, with 120 columns
instead of 79. We do *not* use form-feed (``^L``) characters to
separate sections either. Compliance is tested automatically when
you run the tests.

Continuous Integration
----------------------

All pull requests go through Travis-CI_, which runs the tests on Linux
and Mac OS X as well as the flake8 style checker. Windows builds run on AppVeyor_,
while additional Unix-like platforms are tested on Golem_.

.. _AppVeyor: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/borgbackup/borg/
.. _Golem: https://golem.enkore.de/view/Borg/
.. _Travis-CI: https://travis-ci.org/borgbackup/borg

Output and Logging
------------------
When writing logger calls, always use correct log level (debug only for
debugging, info for informative messages, warning for warnings, error for
errors, critical for critical errors/states).

When directly talking to the user (e.g. Y/N questions), do not use logging,
but directly output to stderr (not: stdout, it could be connected to a pipe).

To control the amount and kinds of messages output emitted at info level, use
flags like ``--stats`` or ``--list``, then create a topic logger for messages
controlled by that flag.  See ``_setup_implied_logging()`` in
``borg/archiver.py`` for the entry point to topic logging.

Building a development environment
----------------------------------

First, just install borg into a virtual env as described before.

To install some additional packages needed for running the tests, activate your
virtual env and run::

  pip install -r requirements.d/development.txt


Running the tests
-----------------

The tests are in the borg/testsuite package.

To run all the tests, you need to have fakeroot installed. If you do not have
fakeroot, you still will be able to run most tests, just leave away the
`fakeroot -u` from the given command lines.

To run the test suite use the following command::

  fakeroot -u tox  # run all tests

Some more advanced examples::

  # verify a changed tox.ini (run this after any change to tox.ini):
  fakeroot -u tox --recreate

  fakeroot -u tox -e py34  # run all tests, but only on python 3.4

  fakeroot -u tox borg.testsuite.locking  # only run 1 test module

  fakeroot -u tox borg.testsuite.locking -- -k '"not Timer"'  # exclude some tests

  fakeroot -u tox borg.testsuite -- -v  # verbose py.test

Important notes:

- When using ``--`` to give options to py.test, you MUST also give ``borg.testsuite[.module]``.


Documentation
-------------

Generated files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Usage documentation (found in ``docs/usage/``) and man pages
(``docs/man/``) are generated automatically from the command line
parsers declared in the program and their documentation, which is
embedded in the program (see archiver.py). These are committed to git
for easier use by packagers downstream.

When a command is added, a commandline flag changed, added or removed,
the usage docs need to be rebuilt as well::

  python setup.py build_usage
  python setup.py build_man

However, we prefer to do this as part of our :ref:`releasing`
preparations, so it is generally not necessary to update these when
submitting patches that change something about the command line.

The code documentation (which is currently not part of the released
docs) also uses a generated file (``docs/api.rst``), that needs to be
updated when a module is added or removed::

  python setup.py build_api

Building the docs with Sphinx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The documentation (in reStructuredText format, .rst) is in docs/.

To build the html version of it, you need to have sphinx installed::

  pip3 install sphinx sphinx_rtd_theme  # important: this will install sphinx with Python 3

Now run::

  cd docs/
  make html

Then point a web browser at docs/_build/html/index.html.

The website is updated automatically through Github web hooks on the
main repository.

Using Vagrant
-------------

We use Vagrant for the automated creation of testing environments and borgbackup
standalone binaries for various platforms.

For better security, there is no automatic sync in the VM to host direction.
The plugin `vagrant-scp` is useful to copy stuff from the VMs to the host.

Usage::

   # To create and provision the VM:
   vagrant up OS
   # To create an ssh session to the VM:
   vagrant ssh OS
   # To execute a command via ssh in the VM:
   vagrant ssh OS -c "command args"
   # To shut down the VM:
   vagrant halt OS
   # To shut down and destroy the VM:
   vagrant destroy OS
   # To copy files from the VM (in this case, the generated binary):
   vagrant scp OS:/vagrant/borg/borg.exe .


Creating standalone binaries
----------------------------

Make sure you have everything built and installed (including llfuse and fuse).
When using the Vagrant VMs, pyinstaller will already be installed.

With virtual env activated::

  pip install pyinstaller  # or git checkout master
  pyinstaller -F -n borg-PLATFORM borg/__main__.py
  for file in dist/borg-*; do gpg --armor --detach-sign $file; done

If you encounter issues, see also our `Vagrantfile` for details.

.. note:: Standalone binaries built with pyinstaller are supposed to
          work on same OS, same architecture (x86 32bit, amd64 64bit)
          without external dependencies.


Merging maintenance branches
----------------------------

As mentioned above bug fixes will usually be merged into a maintenance branch (x.y-maint) and then
merged back into the master branch. Large diffs between these branches can make automatic merges troublesome,
therefore we recommend to use these merge parameters::

  git merge 1.0-maint -s recursive -X rename-threshold=20%

.. _releasing:

Creating a new release
----------------------

Checklist:

- make sure all issues for this milestone are closed or moved to the
  next milestone
- find and fix any low hanging fruit left on the issue tracker
- check that Travis CI is happy
- update ``CHANGES.rst``, based on ``git log $PREVIOUS_RELEASE..``
- check version number of upcoming release in ``CHANGES.rst``
- verify that ``MANIFEST.in`` and ``setup.py`` are complete
- ``python setup.py build_api ; python setup.py build_usage ; python setup.py build_man`` and commit
- tag the release::

    git tag -s -m "tagged/signed release X.Y.Z" X.Y.Z

- create a clean repo and use it for the following steps::

    git clone borg borg-clean

  This makes sure no uncommitted files get into the release archive.
  It also will find if you forgot to commit something that is needed.
  It also makes sure the vagrant machines only get committed files and
  do a fresh start based on that.
- run tox and/or binary builds on all supported platforms via vagrant,
  check for test failures
- create a release on PyPi::

    python setup.py register sdist upload --identity="Thomas Waldmann" --sign

- close release milestone on Github
- announce on:

 - Mailing list
 - Twitter (follow @ThomasJWaldmann for these tweets)
 - IRC channel (change ``/topic``)

- create a Github release, include:

  * standalone binaries (see above for how to create them)

    + for OS X, document the OS X Fuse version in the README of the binaries.
      OS X FUSE uses a kernel extension that needs to be compatible with the
      code contained in the binary.
  * a link to ``CHANGES.rst``