The Gridcoin Research project operates an open contributor model where anyone is welcome to contribute towards development in the form of peer review, testing and patches. This document explains the practical process and guidelines for contributing.
Firstly in terms of structure, there are "Core developers" who are responsible for the release cycle, development, and merging pull requests. The releases are generally done by the "Lead developer".
New contributors are very welcome and needed.
Reviewing and testing is the most effective way you can contribute as a new contributor, and it also will teach you much more about the code and process than opening PRs. Please refer to the section peer review later in this document.
Before you start contributing, familiarize yourself with the Gridcoin Research build system and tests. Refer to the documentation in the repository on how to build Gridcoin Research and how to run the unit and functional tests.
There are many open issues of varying difficulty waiting to be fixed. If you're looking for somewhere to start contributing, check out the good first issue list or changes that are up for grabs. Some of them might no longer be applicable. So if you are interested, but unsure, you might want to leave a comment on the issue first.
The purpose of the good first issue label is to highlight which issues are
suitable for a new contributor without a deep understanding of the codebase.
However, good first issues can be solved by anyone. If they remain unsolved for a longer time, a frequent contributor might address them.
You do not need to request permission to start working on an issue. However, you are encouraged to leave a comment if you are planning to work on it. This will help other contributors monitor which issues are actively being addressed and is also an effective way to request assistance if and when you need it.
Most communication about Gridcoin Research development happens on Slack, in the
#development channel on TeamGridcoin. The invite link is in
the main README.
Discussion about code base improvements happens in GitHub issues and on pull requests.
The codebase is maintained using the "contributor workflow" where everyone without exception contributes patch proposals using "pull requests". This facilitates social contribution, easy testing and peer review.
To contribute a patch, the workflow is as follows:
- Fork repository (only for the first time)
- Create topic branch
- Commit patches
The project coding conventions in the coding.txt must be followed.
In general, commits should be atomic and diffs should be easy to read. For this reason, do not mix any formatting fixes or code moves with actual code changes.
Commit messages should be verbose by default consisting of a short subject line (50 chars max), a blank line and detailed explanatory text as separate paragraph(s), unless the title alone is self-explanatory (like "Corrected typo in init.cpp") in which case a single title line is sufficient. Commit messages should be helpful to people reading your code in the future, so explain the reasoning for your decisions. Further explanation here.
If a particular commit references another issue, please add the reference. For
example: refs #1234 or fixes #4321. Using the fixes or closes keywords
will cause the corresponding issue to be closed when the pull request is merged.
Commit messages should never contain any @ mentions.
Please refer to the Git manual for more information about Git.
- Push changes to your fork
- Create pull request
The title of the pull request should be prefixed by the component or area that the pull request affects. If multiple are involved, separate with commas. Include valid areas such as:
accrualfor changes to research reward accounting or tally codebuildfor changes to the GNU Autotools or reproducible buildsconsensusfor changes to consensus critical codecontractfor changes to contract codedocfor changes to the documentationguiorqtfor changes to gridcoinresearchlogfor changes to log messagesminingfor changes to the mining codenetorp2pfor changes to the peer-to-peer network coderefactorfor structural changes that do not change behaviorresearcherfor changes to BOINC integration/context, CPID or beacon coderpcfor changes to the RPCscraperfor changes to the Scraperscriptfor changes to the scripts and toolsstakingfor changes to block creation and kernel codesuperblockfor changes to superblock structure and consensus rulestest,qaorcifor changes to the unit tests, QA tests or CI codeutilorlibfor changes to the utils or librariesvotingfor changes to the polls and voting systemwalletfor changes to the wallet codewhitelistfor changes to BOINC project whitelist management
Examples:
rpc: scanforunspent
docs: Fix Ubuntu/Debian/openSUSE QT5 Dependencies
depends: fix qt determinism
log: Fix typo in log message
mining, rpc: Remove kernel-diff-best and kernel-diff-sum
The body of the pull request should contain enough description about what the patch does together with any justification/reasoning. You should include references to any discussions (for example other tickets or discussions).
If a pull request is not to be considered for merging (yet), please prefix the title with [WIP], mark the pull request as draft or use Tasks Lists in the body of the pull request to indicate tasks are pending.
At this stage, one should expect comments and review from other contributors. You can add more commits to your pull request by committing them locally and pushing to your fork until you have satisfied all feedback.
Note: Code review is a burdensome but important part of the development process, and as such, certain types of pull requests are rejected. In general, if the improvements do not warrant the review effort required, the PR has a high chance of being rejected. It is up to the PR author to convince the reviewers that the changes warrant the review effort, and if reviewers are "Concept NACK'ing" the PR, the author may need to present arguments and/or do research backing their suggested changes.
If your pull request contains fixup commits (commits that change the same line of code repeatedly) or too fine-grained commits, you may be asked to squash your commits before it will be merged. The basic squashing workflow is shown below.
git checkout your_branch_name
git rebase -i HEAD~n
# n is normally the number of commits in the pull request.
# Set commits (except the one in the first line) from 'pick' to 'squash', save and quit.
# On the next screen, edit/refine commit messages.
# Save and quit.
git push -f # (force push to GitHub)
Please update the resulting commit message if needed. It should read as a coherent message. In most cases, this means that you should not just list the interim commits.
If you have problems with squashing (or other workflows with git), you can
alternatively enable "Allow edits from maintainers" in the right GitHub
sidebar and ask for help in the pull request.
Please refrain from creating several pull requests for the same change. Use the pull request that is already open (or was created earlier) to amend changes. This preserves the discussion and review that happened earlier for the respective change set.
The length of time required for peer review is unpredictable and will vary from pull request to pull request.
When a pull request conflicts with the target branch, you may be asked to rebase it on top of the current target branch.
The git rebase command will take care of rebuilding your commits on top of the new base.
This project aims to have a clean git history, where code changes are only made in non-merge commits. This simplifies auditability because merge commits can be assumed to not contain arbitrary code changes.
After a rebase, reviewers are encouraged to sign off on the force push. This should be relatively straightforward with
the git range-diff tool. To avoid needless review churn, maintainers will
generally merge pull requests that received the most review attention first.
Patchsets are encouraged to be focused. For example, a pull request could add a feature, fix a bug, or refactor code; but not a mixture. Please also try to avoid super pull requests which attempt to do too much, are overly large, or overly complex as this makes review difficult.
When adding a new feature, thought must be given to the long term technical debt and maintenance that feature may require after inclusion. Before proposing a new feature that will require maintenance, please consider if you are willing to maintain it (including bug fixing). If features get orphaned with no maintainer in the future, they may be removed by the Repository Maintainer.
Refactoring is a necessary part of any software project's evolution. The following guidelines cover refactoring pull requests for the project.
There are three categories of refactoring: code-only moves, code style fixes, and code refactoring. In general, refactoring pull requests should not mix these three kinds of activities in order to make refactoring pull requests easy to review and uncontroversial. In all cases, refactoring PRs must not change the behaviour of code within the pull request (bugs must be preserved as is).
Project maintainers aim for a quick turnaround on refactoring pull requests, so where possible keep them short, uncomplex and easy to verify.
Pull requests that refactor the code should not be made by new contributors. It requires a certain level of experience to know where the code belongs to and to understand the full ramification (including rebase effort of open pull requests).
Trivial pull requests or pull requests that refactor the code with no clear benefits may be immediately closed by the maintainers to reduce unnecessary workload on reviewing.
The following applies to code changes to the Gridcoin Research project.
Whether a pull request is merged into Gridcoin Research rests with the project merge maintainers and ultimately the project lead.
Maintainers will take into consideration if a patch is in line with the general principles of the project; meets the minimum standards for inclusion; and will judge the general consensus of contributors.
In general, all pull requests must:
- Have a clear use case, fix a demonstrable bug or serve the greater good of the project (for example refactoring for modularisation);
- Be well peer reviewed;
- Have unit tests and functional tests where appropriate;
- Follow code style guidelines (C++);
- Not break the existing test suite;
- Where bugs are fixed, where possible, there should be unit tests demonstrating the bug and also proving the fix. This helps prevent regression.
- Change relevant comments and documentation when behaviour of code changes.
Patches that change Gridcoin consensus rules are considerably more involved than normal because they affect the entire ecosystem and so must be preceded by extensive discussions. While each case will be different, one should be prepared to expend more time and effort than for other kinds of patches because of increased peer review and consensus building requirements.
Anyone may participate in peer review which is expressed by comments in the pull request. Typically reviewers will review the code for obvious errors, as well as test out the patch set and opine on the technical merits of the patch. Project maintainers take into account the peer review when determining if there is consensus to merge a pull request (remember that discussions may have been spread out over GitHub and Slack).
A review can be a conceptual review, where the reviewer leaves a comment
Concept (N)ACK, meaning "I do (not) agree in the general goal of this pull request",Approach (N)ACK, meaningConcept ACK, but "I do (not) agree with the approach of this change".
A NACK needs to include a rationale why the change is not worthwhile.
NACKs without accompanying reasoning may be disregarded.
After conceptual agreement on the change, code review can be provided. It is
starting with ACK BRANCH_COMMIT, where BRANCH_COMMIT is the top of the
topic branch. The review is followed by a description of how the reviewer did
the review. The following
language is used within pull-request comments:
- "I have tested the code", involving change-specific manual testing in addition to running the unit and functional tests, and in case it is not obvious how the manual testing was done, it should be described;
- "I have not tested the code, but I have reviewed it and it looks OK, I agree it can be merged";
- Nit refers to trivial, often non-blocking issues.
Project maintainers reserve the right to weigh the opinions of peer reviewers using common sense judgement and also may weight based on meritocracy: Those that have demonstrated a deeper commitment and understanding towards the project (over time) or have clear domain expertise may naturally have more weight, as one would expect in all walks of life.
Where a patch set affects consensus critical code, the bar will be set much higher in terms of discussion and peer review requirements, keeping in mind that mistakes could be very costly to the wider community. This includes refactoring of consensus critical code.
Where a patch set proposes to change the Gridcoin consensus, it must have been discussed extensively on Slack/GitHub and have a generally widely perceived technical consensus of being a worthwhile change based on the judgement of the maintainers.
As most reviewers are themselves developers with their own projects, the review process can be quite lengthy, and some amount of patience is required. If you find that you've been waiting for a pull request to be given attention for several months, there may be a number of reasons for this, some of which you can do something about:
- It may be because of a feature freeze due to an upcoming release. During this time, only bug fixes are taken into consideration. If your pull request is a new feature, it will not be prioritized until the release is over. Wait for release.
- It may be because the changes you are suggesting do not appeal to people. Rather than nits and critique, which require effort and means they care enough to spend time on your contribution, thundering silence is a good sign of widespread (mild) dislike of a given change (because people don't assume others won't actually like the proposal). Don't take that personally, though! Instead, take another critical look at what you are suggesting and see if it: changes too much, is too broad, doesn't adhere to the coding.txt, is dangerous or insecure, is messily written, etc. Identify and address any of the issues you find. Then ask e.g. on IRC if someone could give their opinion on the concept itself.
- It may be because your code is too complex for all but a few people. And those people may not have realized your pull request even exists. A great way to find people who are qualified and care about the code you are touching is the Git Blame feature. Simply find the person touching the code you are touching before you and see if you can find them and give them a nudge. Don't be incessant about the nudging though.
- Finally, if all else fails, ask on Slack or elsewhere for someone to give your pull request a look. If you think you've been waiting an unreasonably long amount of time (month+) for no particular reason (few lines changed, etc), this is totally fine. Try to return the favor when someone else is asking for feedback on their code, and universe balances out.
Security and bug fixes that are critical can be backported from development to hotfix branch. They might have to be modified to be compatible due to other changes in the development branch. PRs made from hotfix branch to development branch for such changes will be rejected.
Special PRs that are required to do extensive backporting are discouraged. If such a PR is done, that PR will be most likely overwritten with a force update from the development/testnet branch.
The release process is handled by the core team, usually by the lead developer. More info about the process can be found in release-process.md.
By contributing to this repository, you agree to license your work under the MIT license unless specified otherwise in assets-attribution.md or at the top of the file itself. Any work contributed where you are not the original author must contain its license header with the original author(s) and source.