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Contribution Guidelines

Table of Contents

Introduction

This document explains how to contribute changes to the Gitea project. It assumes you have followed the installation instructions. Sensitive security-related issues should be reported to security@gitea.io.

For configuring IDE or code editor to develop Gitea see IDE and code editor configuration

Bug reports

Please search the issues on the issue tracker with a variety of keywords to ensure your bug is not already reported.

If unique, open an issue and answer the questions so we can understand and reproduce the problematic behavior.

To show us that the issue you are having is in Gitea itself, please write clear, concise instructions so we can reproduce the behavior— even if it seems obvious. The more detailed and specific you are, the faster we can fix the issue. Check out How to Report Bugs Effectively.

Please be kind, remember that Gitea comes at no cost to you, and you're getting free help.

Discuss your design

The project welcomes submissions. If you want to change or add something, please let everyone know what you're working on—file an issue! Significant changes must go through the change proposal process before they can be accepted. To create a proposal, file an issue with your proposed changes documented, and make sure to note in the title of the issue that it is a proposal.

This process gives everyone a chance to validate the design, helps prevent duplication of effort, and ensures that the idea fits inside the goals for the project and tools. It also checks that the design is sound before code is written; the code review tool is not the place for high-level discussions.

Testing redux

Before submitting a pull request, run all the tests for the whole tree to make sure your changes don't cause regression elsewhere.

Here's how to run the test suite:

  • code lint
make lint lint everything (not suggest if you only change one type code)
make lint-frontend lint frontend files
make lint-backend lint backend files
  • run test code (Suggest run in Linux)
make test[\#TestSpecificName] run unit test
make test-sqlite[\#TestSpecificName] run integration test for SQLite
More details about integration tests
make test-e2e-sqlite[\#TestSpecificFileName] run end-to-end test for SQLite
More details about e2e tests

Vendoring

We manage dependencies via Go Modules, more details: go mod.

Pull requests should only include go.mod, go.sum updates if they are part of the same change, be it a bugfix or a feature addition.

The go.mod, go.sum update needs to be justified as part of the PR description, and must be verified by the reviewers and/or merger to always reference an existing upstream commit.

You can find more information on how to get started with it on the Modules Wiki.

Translation

We do all translation work inside Crowdin. The only translation that is maintained in this Git repository is en_US.ini and is synced regularly to Crowdin. Once a translation has reached A SATISFACTORY PERCENTAGE it will be synced back into this repo and included in the next released version.

Building Gitea

See the hacking instructions.

Code review

Changes to Gitea must be reviewed before they are accepted—no matter who makes the change, even if they are an owner or a maintainer. We use GitHub's pull request workflow to do that. And, we also use LGTM to ensure every PR is reviewed by at least 2 maintainers.

Please try to make your pull request easy to review for us. And, please read the How to get faster PR reviews guide; it has lots of useful tips for any project you may want to contribute. Some of the key points:

  • Make small pull requests. The smaller, the faster to review and the more likely it will be merged soon.
  • Don't make changes unrelated to your PR. Maybe there are typos on some comments, maybe refactoring would be welcome on a function... but if that is not related to your PR, please make another PR for that.
  • Split big pull requests into multiple small ones. An incremental change will be faster to review than a huge PR.
  • Use the first comment as a summary explainer of your PR and you should keep this up-to-date as the PR evolves.

If your PR could cause a breaking change you must add a BREAKING section to this comment e.g.:

## :warning: BREAKING :warning:

To explain how this could affect users and how to mitigate these changes.

Once code review starts on your PR, do not rebase nor squash your branch as it makes it difficult to review the new changes. Only if there is a need, sync your branch by merging the base branch into yours. Don't worry about merge commits messing up your tree as the final merge process squashes all commits into one, with the visible commit message (first line) being the PR title + PR index and description being the PR's first comment.

Once your PR gets the lgtm/done label, don't worry about keeping it up-to-date or breaking builds (unless there's a merge conflict or a request is made by a maintainer to make modifications). It is the maintainer team's responsibility from this point to get it merged.

Styleguide

For imports you should use the following format (without the comments)

import (
  // stdlib
  "fmt"
  "math"

  // local packages
  "code.gitea.io/gitea/models"
  "code.gitea.io/sdk/gitea"

  // external packages
  "github.com/foo/bar"
  "gopkg.io/baz.v1"
)

Design guideline

To maintain understandable code and avoid circular dependencies it is important to have a good structure of the code. The Gitea code is divided into the following parts:

  • models: Contains the data structures used by xorm to construct database tables. It also contains supporting functions to query and update the database. Dependencies to other code in Gitea should be avoided although some modules might be needed (for example for logging).
  • models/fixtures: Sample model data used in integration tests.
  • models/migrations: Handling of database migrations between versions. PRs that changes a database structure shall also have a migration step.
  • modules: Different modules to handle specific functionality in Gitea. Shall only depend on other modules but not other packages (models, services).
  • public: Frontend files (javascript, images, css, etc.)
  • routers: Handling of server requests. As it uses other Gitea packages to serve the request, other packages (models, modules or services) shall not depend on routers.
  • services: Support functions for common routing operations. Uses models and modules to handle the request.
  • templates: Golang templates for generating the html output.
  • tests/e2e: End to end tests
  • tests/integration: Integration tests
  • tests/gitea-repositories-meta: Sample repos used in integration tests. Adding a new repo requires editing models/fixtures/repositories.yml and models/fixtures/repo_unit.yml to match.
  • tests/gitea-lfs-meta: Sample LFS objects used in integration tests. Adding a new object requires editing models/fixtures/lfs_meta_object.yml to match.
  • vendor: External code that Gitea depends on.

Documentation

If you add a new feature or change an existing aspect of Gitea, the documentation for that feature must be created or updated.

API v1

The API is documented by swagger and is based on GitHub API v3.

Thus, Gitea´s API should use the same endpoints and fields as GitHub´s API as far as possible, unless there are good reasons to deviate.

If Gitea provides functionality that GitHub does not, a new endpoint can be created.

If information is provided by Gitea that is not provided by the GitHub API, a new field can be used that doesn't collide with any GitHub fields.

Updating an existing API should not remove existing fields unless there is a really good reason to do so.

The same applies to status responses. If you notice a problem, feel free to leave a comment in the code for future refactoring to APIv2 (which is currently not planned).

All expected results (errors, success, fail messages) should be documented (example).

All JSON input types must be defined as a struct in modules/structs/ (example) and referenced in routers/api/v1/swagger/options.go.

They can then be used like the following: (example).

All JSON responses must be defined as a struct in modules/structs/ (example) and referenced in its category in routers/api/v1/swagger/ (example)

They can be used like the following: (example)

In general, HTTP methods are chosen as follows:

  • GET endpoints return requested object and status OK (200)
  • DELETE endpoints return status No Content (204)
  • POST endpoints return status Created (201), used to create new objects (e.g. a User)
  • PUT endpoints return status No Content (204), used to add/assign existing Objects (e.g. User) to something (e.g. Org-Team)
  • PATCH endpoints return changed object and status OK (200), used to edit/change an existing object

An endpoint which changes/edits an object expects all fields to be optional (except ones to identify the object, which are required).

Endpoints returning lists should

  • support pagination (page & limit options in query)
  • set X-Total-Count header via SetTotalCountHeader (example)

Backports and Frontports

Occasionally backports of PRs are required.

The backported PR title should be:

Title of backported PR (#ORIGINAL_PR_NUMBER)

The first two lines of the summary of the backporting PR should be:

Backport #ORIGINAL_PR_NUMBER

with the rest of the summary matching the original PR. Similarly for frontports

A command to help create backports can be found in contrib/backport and can be installed (from inside the gitea repo root directory) using:

go install contrib/backport/backport.go

Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO)

We consider the act of contributing to the code by submitting a Pull Request as the "Sign off" or agreement to the certifications and terms of the DCO and MIT license. No further action is required. Additionally you could add a line at the end of your commit message.

Signed-off-by: Joe Smith <joe.smith@email.com>

If you set your user.name and user.email Git configs, you can add the line to the end of your commit automatically with git commit -s.

We assume in good faith that the information you provide is legally binding.

Release Cycle

We adopted a release schedule to streamline the process of working on, finishing, and issuing releases. The overall goal is to make a minor release every three or four months, which breaks down into two or three months of general development followed by one month of testing and polishing known as the release freeze. All the feature pull requests should be merged before feature freeze. And, during the frozen period, a corresponding release branch is open for fixes backported from main branch. Release candidates are made during this period for user testing to obtain a final version that is maintained in this branch.

Major release cycles are seasonal. They always begin on the 25th and end on the 24th (i.e., the 25th of December to March 24th).

During a development cycle, we may also publish any necessary minor releases for the previous version. For example, if the latest, published release is v1.2, then minor changes for the previous release—e.g., v1.1.0 -> v1.1.1—are still possible.

The previous release gets fixes for:

  • Security issues
  • Critical bugs
  • Regressions
  • Build issues
  • Necessary enhancements (including necessary UI/UX fixes)

The backported fixes should avoid breaking downgrade between minor releases as much as possible.

Maintainers

To make sure every PR is checked, we have team maintainers. Every PR MUST be reviewed by at least two maintainers (or owners) before it can get merged. A maintainer should be a contributor of Gitea (or Gogs) and contributed at least 4 accepted PRs. A contributor should apply as a maintainer in the Discord #develop channel. The owners or the team maintainers may invite the contributor. A maintainer should spend some time on code reviews. If a maintainer has no time to do that, they should apply to leave the maintainers team and we will give them the honor of being a member of the advisors team. Of course, if an advisor has time to code review, we will gladly welcome them back to the maintainers team. If a maintainer is inactive for more than 3 months and forgets to leave the maintainers team, the owners may move him or her from the maintainers team to the advisors team. For security reasons, Maintainers should use 2FA for their accounts and if possible provide GPG signed commits. https://help.github.com/articles/securing-your-account-with-two-factor-authentication-2fa/ https://help.github.com/articles/signing-commits-with-gpg/

Owners

Since Gitea is a pure community organization without any company support, to keep the development healthy we will elect three owners every year. All contributors may vote to elect up to three candidates, one of which will be the main owner, and the other two the assistant owners. When the new owners have been elected, the old owners will give up ownership to the newly elected owners. If an owner is unable to do so, the other owners will assist in ceding ownership to the newly elected owners. For security reasons, Owners or any account with write access (like a bot) must use 2FA. https://help.github.com/articles/securing-your-account-with-two-factor-authentication-2fa/

After the election, the new owners should proactively agree with our CONTRIBUTING requirements in the Discord #general channel. Below are the words to speak:

I'm honored to having been elected an owner of Gitea, I agree with
[CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md). I will spend part of my time on Gitea
and lead the development of Gitea.

To honor the past owners, here's the history of the owners and the time they served:

Versions

Gitea has the main branch as a tip branch and has version branches such as release/v0.9. release/v0.9 is a release branch and we will tag v0.9.0 for binary download. If v0.9.0 has bugs, we will accept pull requests on the release/v0.9 branch and publish a v0.9.1 tag, after bringing the bug fix also to the main branch.

Since the main branch is a tip version, if you wish to use Gitea in production, please download the latest release tag version. All the branches will be protected via GitHub, all the PRs to every branch must be reviewed by two maintainers and must pass the automatic tests.

Releasing Gitea

  • Let $vmaj, $vmin and $vpat be Major, Minor and Patch version numbers, $vpat should be rc1, rc2, 0, 1, ...... $vmaj.$vmin will be kept the same as milestones on github or gitea in future.
  • Before releasing, confirm all the version's milestone issues or PRs has been resolved. Then discuss the release on Discord channel #maintainers and get agreed with almost all the owners and mergers. Or you can declare the version and if nobody against in about serval hours.
  • If this is a big version first you have to create PR for changelog on branch main with PRs with label changelog and after it has been merged do following steps:
    • Create -dev tag as git tag -s -F release.notes v$vmaj.$vmin.0-dev and push the tag as git push origin v$vmaj.$vmin.0-dev.
    • When CI has finished building tag then you have to create a new branch named release/v$vmaj.$vmin
  • If it is bugfix version create PR for changelog on branch release/v$vmaj.$vmin and wait till it is reviewed and merged.
  • Add a tag as git tag -s -F release.notes v$vmaj.$vmin.$, release.notes file could be a temporary file to only include the changelog this version which you added to CHANGELOG.md.
  • And then push the tag as git push origin v$vmaj.$vmin.$. Drone CI will automatically create a release and upload all the compiled binary. (But currently it doesn't add the release notes automatically. Maybe we should fix that.)
  • If needed send a frontport PR for the changelog to branch main and update the version in docs/config.yaml to refer to the new version.
  • Send PR to blog repository announcing the release.
  • Verify all release assets were correctly published through CI on dl.gitea.io and GitHub releases. Once ACKed:

Copyright

Code that you contribute should use the standard copyright header:

// Copyright <year> The Gitea Authors. All rights reserved.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

Files in the repository contain copyright from the year they are added to the year they are last changed. If the copyright author is changed, just paste the header below the old one.

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