Contributing code to Sydent

Everyone is welcome to contribute code to Sydent, provided you are willing to license your contributions under the same license as the project itself. In this case, the Apache Software License v2.

Set up your development environment

To contribute to Sydent, ensure you have Python 3.7 and git available on your system. You'll need to clone the source code first:

git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/sydent.git

Installing `poetry`

Sydent uses Poetry to manage its dependencies. See its installation instructions to get started. They recommend using a custom installation script, which installs poetry in an isolated environment capable of self updating. We recommend using pipx instead:

pip install pipx
pipx install poetry==1.1.12
poetry --version

For the time being, we are erring towards caution by using a pinned version of poetry.

Generate a virtualenv

Poetry manages a virtual environment ('virtualenv') for Sydent, using specific versions of every dependency. To create this environment, run

cd sydent
poetry install

This installs Sydent, its dependencies, and useful development tools into poetry's virtual environment. To run a one-off command in this environment, use poetry run. Otherwise, you'll end up running against the system python environment.

$ which python
/usr/bin/python
$ poetry run which python
/home/user/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/matrix-sydent-Ew7U0NLX-py3.10/bin/python

To avoid repeatedly typing out poetry run, use poetry shell:

$ poetry shell
Spawning shell within /home/user/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/matrix-sydent-Ew7U0NLX-py3.10
. /home/user/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/matrix-sydent-Ew7U0NLX-py3.10/bin/activate

$ which python
~/.cache/pypoetry/virtualenvs/matrix-sydent-Ew7U0NLX-py3.10/bin/python

Be sure to do this every time you open a new terminal window for working on Sydent. Using poetry run or poetry shell ensures that any Python commands you run (pip, python, etc.) use the versions inside your venv, and not your system Python.

When you're done, you can close your terminal.

Optional: `direnv`

If even typing poetry shell is too much work for you, take a look at direnv. A few steps are needed:

install direnv.
Add the configuration from here to ~/.direnvrc.
In the Sydent checkout, run echo layout poetry >> .envrc. Then run direnv allow.

From now on, when you cd into the sydent directory, poetry shell will run automatically. Whenever you navigate out of the sydent directory, you'll no longer be using poetry's venv.

Run the unit tests

To make sure everything is working as expected, run the unit tests:

poetry run trial tests

If you see a message like:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 25 tests in 0.324s

PASSED (successes=25)

Then all is well and you're ready to work!

Run the black-box tests

Sydent uses matrix-is-tester to provide black-box testing of compliance with the Matrix Identity Service API. (Features that are Sydent-specific belong in unit tests rather than the black-box test suite.) This project is marked as a development dependency, so Poetry will automatically install for you.

Now, to run matrix-is-tester, execute:

poetry run trial matrix_is_tester

Advanced

The steps above are sufficient and describe a clean way to run the black-box tests. However, in the event that you need more control, this subsection provides more information.

The SYDENT_PYTHON environment variable can be set to launch Sydent with a specific python binary:

SYDENT_PYTHON=/path/to/python trial matrix_is_tester

The matrix_is_test directory contains Sydent's launcher for matrix_is_tester: this means that Sydent's directory needs to be on the Python path (e.g. PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/sydent).

How to contribute

The preferred and easiest way to contribute changes is to fork the relevant project on github, and then create a pull request to ask us to pull your changes into our repo.

Some other points to follow:

Please base your changes on the main branch.
Please follow the code style requirements.
Please include a changelog entry with each PR.
Please sign off your contribution.
Please keep an eye on the pull request for feedback from the continuous integration system and try to fix any errors that come up.
If you need to update your PR, just add new commits to your branch rather than rebasing.

Code style and continuous integration

Sydent uses black, isort and flake8 to enforce code style. Use the following script to enforce these style guides:

poetry run scripts-dev/lint.sh

(This also runs mypy, our preferred typechecker.)

All of these checks are automatically run against any pull request via GitHub Actions. If your change breaks the build, this will be shown in GitHub, with links to the build results. If your build fails, please try to fix the errors and update your branch.

Changelog

All changes, even minor ones, need a corresponding changelog / newsfragment entry. These are managed by Towncrier.

To create a changelog entry, make a new file in the changelog.d directory named in the format of PRnumber.type. The type can be one of the following:

feature
bugfix
docker (for updates to the Docker image)
doc (for updates to the documentation)
removal (also used for deprecations)
misc (for internal-only changes)

This file will become part of our changelog at the next release, so the content of the file should be a short description of your change in the same style as the rest of the changelog. The file can contain Markdown formatting, and should end with a full stop (.) or an exclamation mark (!) for consistency.

PLEASE DO add credits for yourself to your changelog entry, by writing 'Contributed by Your Name.' or 'Contributed by @your-github-username.' at the end of your changelog entry, unless you would prefer not to. We value your contributions and would like to have you shouted out in the release notes!

For example, a fix in PR #1234 would have its changelog entry in changelog.d/1234.bugfix, and contain content like:

The security levels of Florbs are now validated when received via the /federation/florb endpoint. Contributed by Jane Matrix.

If there are multiple pull requests involved in a single bugfix/feature/etc, then the content for each changelog.d file should be the same. Towncrier will merge the matching files together into a single changelog entry when we come to release.

How do I know what to call the changelog file before I create the PR?

Obviously, you don't know if you should call your newsfile 1234.bugfix or 5678.bugfix until you create the PR, which leads to a chicken-and-egg problem.

There are two options for solving this:

Open the PR without a changelog file, see what number you got, and then add the changelog file to your branch (see Updating your pull request), or:
Look at the list of all issues/PRs, add one to the highest number you see, and quickly open the PR before somebody else claims your number.

This script might be helpful if you find yourself doing this a lot.

Sorry, we know it's a bit fiddly, but it's really helpful for us when we come to put together a release!

Sign off

In order to have a concrete record that your contribution is intentional and you agree to license it under the same terms as the project's license, we've adopted the same lightweight approach that the Linux Kernel submitting patches process, Docker, and many other projects use: the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin: https://developercertificate.org/). This is a simple declaration that you wrote the contribution or otherwise have the right to contribute it to Matrix:

Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1

Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
660 York Street, Suite 102,
San Francisco, CA 94110 USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
    have the right to submit it under the open source license
    indicated in the file; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
    of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
    license and I have the right under that license to submit that
    work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
    by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
    permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
    in the file; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
    person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
    it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
    this project or the open source license(s) involved.

If you agree to this for your contribution, then all that's needed is to include the line in your commit or pull request comment:

Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@email.example.org>

We accept contributions under a legally identifiable name, such as your name on government documentation or common-law names (names claimed by legitimate usage or repute). Unfortunately, we cannot accept anonymous contributions at this time.

Git allows you to add this signoff automatically when using the -s flag to git commit, which uses the name and email set in your user.name and user.email git configs.

Updating your pull request

If you decide to make changes to your pull request - perhaps to address issues raised in a review, or to fix problems highlighted by continuous integration - just add new commits to your branch, and push to GitHub. The pull request will automatically be updated.

Please avoid rebasing your branch, especially once the PR has been reviewed: doing so makes it very difficult for a reviewer to see what has changed since a previous review.

Conclusion

That's it! Matrix is a very open and collaborative project as you might expect given our obsession with open communication. If we're going to successfully matrix together all the fragmented communication technologies out there we are reliant on contributions and collaboration from the community to do so. So please get involved - and we hope you have as much fun hacking on Matrix as we do!

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