/brz/remove-bazaar

======================

Bazaar Developer Guide

======================

.. contents::

(The current version of this document is available in the file ``HACKING``

in the source tree, or at http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/bzr.dev/hacking.html)

Getting Started

###############

Exploring the Bazaar Platform

=============================

Before making changes, it's a good idea to explore the work already

done by others. Perhaps the new feature or improvement you're looking

for is available in another plug-in already? If you find a bug,

perhaps someone else has already fixed it?

To answer these questions and more, take a moment to explore the

overall Bazaar Platform. Here are some links to browse:

* The Plugins page on the Wiki - http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrPlugins

* The Bazaar product family on Launchpad - https://launchpad.net/bazaar

* Bug Tracker for the core product - https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/

* Blueprint Tracker for the core product - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/bzr/

If nothing else, perhaps you'll find inspiration in how other developers

have solved their challenges.

Planning and Discussing Changes

===============================

There is a very active community around Bazaar. Mostly we meet on IRC

(#bzr on irc.freenode.net) and on the mailing list. To join the Bazaar

community, see http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrSupport.

If you are planning to make a change, it's a very good idea to mention it

on the IRC channel and/or on the mailing list. There are many advantages

to involving the community before you spend much time on a change.

These include:

* you get to build on the wisdom on others, saving time

* if others can direct you to similar code, it minimises the work to be done 

* it assists everyone in coordinating direction, priorities and effort.

In summary, maximising the input from others typically minimises the

total effort required to get your changes merged. The community is

friendly, helpful and always keen to welcome newcomers.

Bazaar Development in a Nutshell

================================

Looking for a 10 minute introduction to submitting a change?

See http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrGivingBack.

TODO: Merge that Wiki page into this document.

Understanding the Development Process

=====================================

The development team follows many best-practices including:

* a public roadmap and planning process in which anyone can participate

* time based milestones everyone can work towards and plan around

* extensive code review and feedback to contributors

* complete and rigorous test coverage on any code contributed

* automated validation that all tests still pass before code is merged

  into the main code branch.

The key tools we use to enable these practices are:

* Launchpad - https://launchpad.net/

* Bazaar - http://bazaar-vcs.org/

* Bundle Buggy - http://bundlebuggy.aaronbentley.com/

* Patch Queue Manager - https://launchpad.net/pqm/

For further information, see http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrDevelopment.

A Closer Look at the Merge & Review Process

===========================================

If you'd like to propose a change, please post to the

bazaar@lists.canonical.com list with a bundle, patch, or link to a

branch. Put '[PATCH]' or '[MERGE]' in the subject so Bundle Buggy

can pick it out, and explain the change in the email message text.

Remember to update the NEWS file as part of your change if it makes any

changes visible to users or plugin developers. Please include a diff

against mainline if you're giving a link to a branch.

You can generate a bundle like this::

  bzr bundle > mybundle.patch

A .patch extension is recommended instead of .bundle as many mail clients

will send the latter as a binary file. If a bundle would be too long or your

mailer mangles whitespace (e.g. implicitly converts Unix newlines to DOS

newlines), use the merge-directive command instead like this::

  bzr merge-directive http://bazaar-vcs.org http://example.org/my_branch > my_directive.patch

See the help for details on the arguments to merge-directive.

Please do **NOT** put [PATCH] or [MERGE] in the subject line if you don't

want it to be merged. If you want comments from developers rather than

to be merged, you can put '[RFC]' in the subject line.

Anyone is welcome to review code.  There are broadly three gates for

code to get in:

 * Doesn't reduce test coverage: if it adds new methods or commands,

   there should be tests for them.  There is a good test framework

   and plenty of examples to crib from, but if you are having trouble

   working out how to test something feel free to post a draft patch

   and ask for help.

 * Doesn't reduce design clarity, such as by entangling objects

   we're trying to separate.  This is mostly something the more

   experienced reviewers need to help check.

 * Improves bugs, features, speed, or code simplicity.

Code that goes in should pass all three. The core developers take care

to keep the code quality high and understandable while recognising that

perfect is sometimes the enemy of good. (It is easy for reviews to make

people notice other things which should be fixed but those things should

not hold up the original fix being accepted. New things can easily be

recorded in the Bug Tracker instead.)

Anyone can "vote" on the mailing list. Core developers can also vote using

Bundle Buggy. Here are the voting codes and their explanations.

  -1	really don't want it in current form

  -0	somewhat uncomfortable 

  +0	comfortable but resubmission after changes requested

  +1 conditional	good to go after some minor changes

  +1	good to go

+1 conditional is used as a way to avoid another submit/review cycle for

patches that need small changes.

If a change gets two +1 votes from core reviewers, and no

vetos, then it's OK to come in.  Any of the core developers can bring it

into the bzr.dev trunk and backport it to maintenance branches if required.

The Release Manager will merge the change into the branch for a pending

release, if any. As a guideline, core developers usually merge their own

changes and volunteer to merge other contributions if they were the second

reviewer to agree to a change.

To track the progress of proposed changes, use Bundle Buggy. See

http://bundlebuggy.aaronbentley.com/help for a link to all the

outstanding merge requests together with an explanation of the columns.

Bundle Buggy will also mail you a link to track just your change.

Preparing a Sandbox for Making Changes to Bazaar

================================================

Bazaar supports many ways of organising your work. See

http://bazaar-vcs.org/SharedRepositoryLayouts for a summary of the

popular alternatives.

Of course, the best choice for you will depend on numerous factors:

the number of changes you may be making, the complexity of the changes, etc.

As a starting suggestion though:

* create a local copy of the main development branch (bzr.dev) by using

  this command::

    bzr branch http://bazaar-vcs.org/bzr/bzr.dev/ bzr.dev

* keep your copy of bzr.dev prestine (by not developing in it) and keep

  it up to date (by using bzr pull)

* create a new branch off your local bzr.dev copy for each issue

  (bug or feature) you are working on.

This approach makes it easy to go back and make any required changes

after a code review. Resubmitting the change is then simple with no

risk of accidentially including edits related to other issues you may

be working on. After the changes for an issue are accepted and merged,

the associated branch can be deleted or archived as you wish.

Navigating the Code Base

========================

TODO: List and describe in one line the purpose of each directory

inside an installation of bzr.

TODO: Refer to a central location holding an up to date copy of the API

documentation generated by epydoc, e.g. something like

http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/bzrlibapi/bzrlib.html.

Testing Bazaar

##############

The Importance of Testing

=========================

Reliability is a critical success factor for any Version Control System.

We want Bazaar to be highly reliable across multiple platforms while

evolving over time to meet the needs of its community. 

In a nutshell, this is want we expect and encourage:

* New functionality should have test cases.  Preferably write the

  test before writing the code.

  In general, you can test at either the command-line level or the

  internal API level.  See Writing tests below for more detail.

* Try to practice Test-Driven Development: before fixing a bug, write a

  test case so that it does not regress.  Similarly for adding a new

  feature: write a test case for a small version of the new feature before

  starting on the code itself.  Check the test fails on the old code, then

  add the feature or fix and check it passes.

By doing these things, the Bazaar team gets increased confidence that

changes do what they claim to do, whether provided by the core team or

by community members. Equally importantly, we can be surer that changes

down the track do not break new features or bug fixes that you are

contributing today.

As of May 2007, Bazaar ships with a test suite containing over 6000 tests

and growing. We are proud of it and want to remain so. As community

members, we all benefit from it. Would you trust version control on

your project to a product *without* a test suite like Bazaar has?

Running the Test Suite

======================

Currently, bzr selftest is used to invoke tests.

You can provide a pattern argument to run a subset. For example, 

to run just the blackbox tests, run::

  ./bzr selftest -v blackbox

To skip a particular test (or set of tests), use the --exclude option

(shorthand -x) like so::

  ./bzr selftest -v -x blackbox  

To list tests without running them, use the --list-only option like so::

  ./bzr selftest --list-only

This option can be combined with other selftest options (like -x) and

filter patterns to understand their effect.

Writing Tests

=============

In general tests should be placed in a file named test_FOO.py where 

FOO is the logical thing under test. That file should be placed in the

tests subdirectory under the package being tested.

For example, tests for merge3 in bzrlib belong in bzrlib/tests/test_merge3.py.

See bzrlib/tests/test_sampler.py for a template test script.

Tests can be written for the UI or for individual areas of the library.

Choose whichever is appropriate: if adding a new command, or a new command 

option, then you should be writing a UI test.  If you are both adding UI

functionality and library functionality, you will want to write tests for 

both the UI and the core behaviours.  We call UI tests 'blackbox' tests

and they are found in ``bzrlib/tests/blackbox/*.py``. 

When writing blackbox tests please honour the following conventions:

 1. Place the tests for the command 'name' in

    bzrlib/tests/blackbox/test_name.py. This makes it easy for developers

    to locate the test script for a faulty command.

 2. Use the 'self.run_bzr("name")' utility function to invoke the command

    rather than running bzr in a subprocess or invoking the

    cmd_object.run() method directly. This is a lot faster than

    subprocesses and generates the same logging output as running it in a

    subprocess (which invoking the method directly does not).

 3. Only test the one command in a single test script. Use the bzrlib 

    library when setting up tests and when evaluating the side-effects of

    the command. We do this so that the library api has continual pressure

    on it to be as functional as the command line in a simple manner, and

    to isolate knock-on effects throughout the blackbox test suite when a

    command changes its name or signature. Ideally only the tests for a

    given command are affected when a given command is changed.

 4. If you have a test which does actually require running bzr in a

    subprocess you can use ``run_bzr_subprocess``. By default the spawned

    process will not load plugins unless ``--allow-plugins`` is supplied.

Doctests

--------

We make selective use of doctests__.  In general they should provide 

*examples* within the API documentation which can incidentally be tested.  We 

don't try to test every important case using doctests -- regular Python

tests are generally a better solution.

Most of these are in ``bzrlib/doc/api``.  More additions are welcome.

  __ http://docs.python.org/lib/module-doctest.html

Skipping tests and test requirements

------------------------------------

In our enhancements to unittest we allow for some addition results beyond

just success or failure.

If a test can't be run, it can say that it's skipped.  This is typically

used in parameterized tests - for example if a transport doesn't support

setting permissions, we'll skip the tests that relating to that.  ::

    try:

        return self.branch_format.initialize(repo.bzrdir)

    except errors.UninitializableFormat:

        raise tests.TestSkipped('Uninitializable branch format')

Raising TestSkipped is a good idea when you want to make it clear that the

test was not run, rather than just returning which makes it look as if it

was run and passed.

A subtly different case is a test that should run, but can't run in the

current environment.  This covers tests that can only run in particular

operating systems or locales, or that depend on external libraries.  Here

we want to inform the user that they didn't get full test coverage, but

they possibly could if they installed more libraries.  These are expressed

as a dependency on a feature so we can summarise them, and so that the

test for the feature is done only once.  (For historical reasons, as of

May 2007 many cases that should depend on features currently raise

TestSkipped.)  The typical use is::

    class TestStrace(TestCaseWithTransport):

        _test_needs_features = [StraceFeature]

which means all tests in this class need the feature.  The feature itself

should provide a ``_probe`` method which is called once to determine if

it's available.

Known failures

--------------

Known failures are when a test exists but we know it currently doesn't

work, allowing the test suite to still pass.  These should be used with

care, we don't want a proliferation of quietly broken tests.  It might be

appropriate to use them if you've committed a test for a bug but not the

fix for it, or if something works on Unix but not on Windows.

Essential Domain Classes

########################

Introducing the Object Model

============================

The core domain objects within the bazaar model are:

* Transport

* Branch

* Repository

* WorkingTree

Transports are explained below. See http://bazaar-vcs.org/Classes/

for an introduction to the other key classes.

Using Transports

================

The ``Transport`` layer handles access to local or remote directories.

Each Transport object acts like a logical connection to a particular

directory, and it allows various operations on files within it.  You can

*clone* a transport to get a new Transport connected to a subdirectory or

parent directory.

Transports are not used for access to the working tree.  At present

working trees are always local and they are accessed through the regular

Python file io mechanisms.

Filenames vs URLs

-----------------

Transports work in URLs.  Take note that URLs are by definition only

ASCII - the decision of how to encode a Unicode string into a URL must be

taken at a higher level, typically in the Store.  (Note that Stores also

escape filenames which cannot be safely stored on all filesystems, but

this is a different level.)

The main reason for this is that it's not possible to safely roundtrip a

URL into Unicode and then back into the same URL.  The URL standard

gives a way to represent non-ASCII bytes in ASCII (as %-escapes), but

doesn't say how those bytes represent non-ASCII characters.  (They're not

guaranteed to be UTF-8 -- that is common but doesn't happen everywhere.)

For example if the user enters the url ``http://example/%e0`` there's no

way to tell whether that character represents "latin small letter a with

grave" in iso-8859-1, or "latin small letter r with acute" in iso-8859-2

or malformed UTF-8.  So we can't convert their URL to Unicode reliably.

Equally problematic if we're given a url-like string containing non-ascii

characters (such as the accented a) we can't be sure how to convert that

to the correct URL, because we don't know what encoding the server expects

for those characters.  (Although this is not totally reliable we might still

accept these and assume they should be put into UTF-8.)

A similar edge case is that the url ``http://foo/sweet%2Fsour`` contains

one directory component whose name is "sweet/sour".  The escaped slash is

not a directory separator.  If we try to convert URLs to regular Unicode

paths this information will be lost.

This implies that Transports must natively deal with URLs; for simplicity

they *only* deal with URLs and conversion of other strings to URLs is done

elsewhere.  Information they return, such as from ``list_dir``, is also in

the form of URL components.

Core Topics

###########

Evolving Interfaces

===================

We have a commitment to 6 months API stability - any supported symbol in a

release of bzr MUST NOT be altered in any way that would result in

breaking existing code that uses it. That means that method names,

parameter ordering, parameter names, variable and attribute names etc must

not be changed without leaving a 'deprecated forwarder' behind. This even

applies to modules and classes.

If you wish to change the behaviour of a supported API in an incompatible

way, you need to change its name as well. For instance, if I add an optional keyword

parameter to branch.commit - that's fine. On the other hand, if I add a

keyword parameter to branch.commit which is a *required* transaction

object, I should rename the API - i.e. to 'branch.commit_transaction'. 

When renaming such supported API's, be sure to leave a deprecated_method (or

_function or ...) behind which forwards to the new API. See the

bzrlib.symbol_versioning module for decorators that take care of the

details for you - such as updating the docstring, and issuing a warning

when the old api is used.

For unsupported API's, it does not hurt to follow this discipline, but it's

not required. Minimally though, please try to rename things so that

callers will at least get an AttributeError rather than weird results.

Coding Style Guidelines

=======================

Please write PEP-8__ compliant code.  

One often-missed requirement is that the first line of docstrings

should be a self-contained one-sentence summary.

__ http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html

Module Imports

--------------

* Imports should be done at the top-level of the file, unless there is

  a strong reason to have them lazily loaded when a particular

  function runs.  Import statements have a cost, so try to make sure

  they don't run inside hot functions.

* Module names should always be given fully-qualified,

  i.e. ``bzrlib.hashcache`` not just ``hashcache``.

Naming

------

Functions, methods or members that are in some sense "private" are given

a leading underscore prefix.  This is just a hint that code outside the

implementation should probably not use that interface.

We prefer class names to be concatenated capital words (``TestCase``)

and variables, methods and functions to be lowercase words joined by

underscores (``revision_id``, ``get_revision``).

For the purposes of naming some names are treated as single compound

words: "filename", "revno".

Consider naming classes as nouns and functions/methods as verbs.

Try to avoid using abbreviations in names, because there can be

inconsistency if other people use the full name.

Standard Names

--------------

``revision_id`` not ``rev_id`` or ``revid``

Functions that transform one thing to another should be named ``x_to_y``

(not ``x2y`` as occurs in some old code.)

Destructors

-----------

Python destructors (``__del__``) work differently to those of other

languages.  In particular, bear in mind that destructors may be called

immediately when the object apparently becomes unreferenced, or at some

later time, or possibly never at all.  Therefore we have restrictions on

what can be done inside them.

 0. Never use a __del__ method without asking Martin/Robert first.

 1. Never rely on a ``__del__`` method running.  If there is code that

    must run, do it from a ``finally`` block instead.

 2. Never ``import`` from inside a ``__del__`` method, or you may crash the

    interpreter!!

 3. In some places we raise a warning from the destructor if the object

    has not been cleaned up or closed.  This is considered OK: the warning

    may not catch every case but it's still useful sometimes.

Factories

---------

In some places we have variables which point to callables that construct

new instances.  That is to say, they can be used a lot like class objects,

but they shouldn't be *named* like classes:

> I think that things named FooBar should create instances of FooBar when

> called. Its plain confusing for them to do otherwise. When we have

> something that is going to be used as a class - that is, checked for via

> isinstance or other such idioms, them I would call it foo_class, so that

> it is clear that a callable is not sufficient. If it is only used as a

> factory, then yes, foo_factory is what I would use.

Registries

----------

Several places in Bazaar use (or will use) a registry, which is a 

mapping from names to objects or classes.  The registry allows for 

loading in registered code only when it's needed, and keeping

associated information such as a help string or description.

Lazy Imports

------------

To make startup time faster, we use the ``bzrlib.lazy_import`` module to

delay importing modules until they are actually used. ``lazy_import`` uses

the same syntax as regular python imports. So to import a few modules in a

lazy fashion do::

  from bzrlib.lazy_import import lazy_import

  lazy_import(globals(), """

  import os

  import subprocess

  import sys

  import time

  from bzrlib import (

     errors,

     transport,

     revision as _mod_revision,

     )

  import bzrlib.transport

  import bzrlib.xml5

  """)

At this point, all of these exist as a ``ImportReplacer`` object, ready to

be imported once a member is accessed. Also, when importing a module into

the local namespace, which is likely to clash with variable names, it is

recommended to prefix it as ``_mod_<module>``. This makes it clearer that

the variable is a module, and these object should be hidden anyway, since

they shouldn't be imported into other namespaces.

Modules versus Members

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While it is possible for ``lazy_import()`` to import members of a module

when using the ``from module import member`` syntax, it is recommended to

only use that syntax to load sub modules ``from module import submodule``.

This is because variables and classes can frequently be used without

needing a sub-member for example::

  lazy_import(globals(), """

  from module import MyClass

  """)

  def test(x):

      return isinstance(x, MyClass)

This will incorrectly fail, because ``MyClass`` is a ``ImportReplacer``

object, rather than the real class.

Passing to Other Variables

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It also is incorrect to assign ``ImportReplacer`` objects to other variables.

Because the replacer only knows about the original name, it is unable to

replace other variables. The ``ImportReplacer`` class will raise an

``IllegalUseOfScopeReplacer`` exception if it can figure out that this

happened. But it requires accessing a member more than once from the new

variable, so some bugs are not detected right away.

Getting Input

=============

Processing Command Lines

------------------------

bzrlib has a standard framework for parsing command lines and calling

processing routines associated with various commands. See builtins.py

for numerous examples.

Standard Parameter Types

------------------------

There are some common requirements in the library: some parameters need to be

unicode safe, some need byte strings, and so on. At the moment we have

only codified one specific pattern: Parameters that need to be unicode

should be checked via ``bzrlib.osutils.safe_unicode``. This will coerce the

input into unicode in a consistent fashion, allowing trivial strings to be

used for programmer convenience, but not performing unpredictably in the

presence of different locales.

Writing Output

==============

(The strategy described here is what we want to get to, but it's not

consistently followed in the code at the moment.)

bzrlib is intended to be a generically reusable library.  It shouldn't

write messages to stdout or stderr, because some programs that use it

might want to display that information through a GUI or some other

mechanism.

We can distinguish two types of output from the library:

 1. Structured data representing the progress or result of an

    operation.  For example, for a commit command this will be a list

    of the modified files and the finally committed revision number

    and id.

    These should be exposed either through the return code or by calls

    to a callback parameter.

    A special case of this is progress indicators for long-lived

    operations, where the caller should pass a ProgressBar object.

 2. Unstructured log/debug messages, mostly for the benefit of the

    developers or users trying to debug problems.  This should always

    be sent through ``bzrlib.trace`` and Python ``logging``, so that

    it can be redirected by the client.

The distinction between the two is a bit subjective, but in general if

there is any chance that a library would want to see something as

structured data, we should make it so.