Thanks for your interest in Sonata projects!
This document is about issues and pull requests.
First, check if you are up to date: is your version still supported, and are you using the latest patch version?
GitHub Issues is for issues, as opposed to question on how to use Sonata.
If you are not sure this is a bug, or simply want to ask such a question,
please post your question on Stack Overflow,
using the sonata
tags.
If you happen to find a bug, we kindly request you report it. However, before submitting it, please check the project documentation available online.
Then, if it appears that it is indeed a real bug, you may report it using Github by following these points are taken care of:
- Check if the bug is not already reported!
- The title sums up the issue with clarity.
- A description of the workflow needed to reproduce the bug. Please try to make sentences, dumping an error message by itself is frowned upon.
- If your issue is an error page, you must provide us with a stack trace. With
recent versions of Symfony, you can even get stack traces as plain text at the
end of the page. Just look for "Stack Trace (Plain Text)", and copy/paste what
you see. Do not make a screenshot of the stack trace, as screenshots are
not indexed by search engines and will make it difficult for other people to
find your bug report. If you have an issue when using the Symfony CLI,
use the
-vvv
option to get a stack trace. - Screenshots should be considered additional data, and therefore, you should always provide a textual description of the bug. It is strongly recommended to provide them when reporting UI-related bugs.
- If you need to provide code, make sure you know how to get syntactic coloration, in particular with fenced code blocks. When you feel the code is to long, use external code pastebin like https://gist.github.com/ or http://hastebin.com/ . If this is not sufficient, just create a repository to show the issue.
NOTE: Don't hesitate to give as much information as you can (OS, PHP version, extensions...)
All the sonata team will be glad to review your code changes propositions! 😄
But please, read the following before.
Each project follows PSR-1, PSR-2 and Symfony Coding Standards for coding style, PSR-4 for autoloading.
Please install PHP Coding Standard Fixer and run this command before committing your modifications:
php-cs-fixer fix --verbose
Please note that we try to keep phpdoc to a minimum, so if an @param
phpdoc
comment brings nothing more than the type hint and variable name already do,
it should be removed. Descriptions are optional if you want to document a type.
/**
* @param Bar|Baz $foo
* @param int $limit a crucial, highly interesting comment
*/
protected function bar($foo, string $name, int $limit)
{
// ...
}
Please also note that multiline signatures are allowed when the line is longer than 120 characters.
The documentation is mostly written with the rst
format, and can be found in the docs
directory.
You can test the doc rendering with the make docs
command, but to do this, you will need Sphinx.
Just like php dependencies can be managed with Composer, python dependencies can be managed with pip.
To get sphinx, simply run the following command.
pip install --requirement docs/requirements.txt --user
Some python binaries should be downloaded to ~/.local/bin
for Linux or ~/Library/Python/2.7/bin
for Mac OS,
modify your $PATH
environment variable
so that it contains this path and then, from the root of the project, run make docs
If make docs
is successful, you should be able to see your modifications:
$YOUR_FAVORITE_BROWSER docs/_build/html/index.html
If your PR contains a new feature, you must add documentation for it. Of course, you can also create PRs consisting only in documentation changes.
Documentation contributions should comply with the Symfony documentation standards.
If your PR contains a fix, tests should be added to prove the bug.
If your PR contains an addition, a new feature, this one has to be fully covered by tests.
Some rules have to be respected about the test:
- Annotations about coverage are prohibited. This concerns:
@covers
@coversDefaultClass
@coversNothing
@codeCoverageIgnore
@codeCoverageIgnoreStart
@codeCoverageIgnoreEnd
- All test methods must be prefixed by
test
. Example:public function testItReturnsNull()
. - As opposed, the
@test
annotation is prohibited. - All test method names must be in camel case format.
- Most of the time, the test class should have the same name as the targeted class, suffixed by
Test
. - The
@expectedException*
annotations are prohibited. UsePHPUnit_Framework_TestCase::setExpectedException()
.
Since version 4.5, PHPUnit requires and integrates the phpspec/prophecy. Historically, Sonata has been using the built-in test doubles implementation, but has decided to move to Prophecy, which is more concise than its built-in counterpart is most cases. This means the current Sonata codebase currently uses both implementations. If you want to contribute a test that uses test doubles, please follow these rules :
- All new test classes MUST use Prophecy.
- If you are changing an existing test method, you MUST use the same implementation it already uses, and focus on the goal of your PR and only on that.
- If you are changing an existing test class, you MUST use the same implementation it already uses, to be more consistent.
- You MAY submit a PR that migrates a test class from the built-in test double implementation to Prophecy, but it must migrate it entirely. The PR should only be about the migration.
Ideally, a Pull Request should concern one and only one subject, so that it remains clear, and independent changes can be merged quickly.
If you want to fix a typo and improve the performance of a process, you should try as much as possible to do it in a separate PR, so that we can quickly merge one while discussing the other.
The goal is to have a clear commit history and make a possible revert easier.
If you found an issue/typo while writing your change that is not related to your work, please do another PR for that. In some rare cases, you might be forced to do it on the same PR. In this kind of situation, please add a comment on your PR explaining why you feel it is the case.
For each PR, a change log must be provided.
There are few cases where no change log is necessary:
- When you fix a bug on an unreleased feature.
- When your PR concerns only the documentation (fix or improvement).
Do not edit the CHANGELOG.md
directly though, because having every
contributor write PR with changes in the same file, at roughly the same line is
a recipe for conflicts. Instead, fill in the dedicated section that should
appear in a textaread when submitting your PR.
Your note can be put on one of these sections:
Added
for new features.Changed
for changes in existing functionality.Deprecated
for deprecation of features that will be removed in next major release.Removed
for deprecated features removed in this release.Fixed
for any bug fixes.Security
to invite users to upgrade in case of vulnerabilities.
More information about the followed changelog format: keepachangelog.com
Before writing a PR, you have to check on which branch your changes should be based.
Each project follows semver convention for release management.
Here is a short table resuming on which you have to start:
Kind of modification | Backward Compatible (BC) | Type of release | Branch to target | Label |
---|---|---|---|---|
Bug fixes | Yes | Patch | 3.x |
|
Bug fixes | No (Only if no choice) | Major | master |
|
Feature | Yes | Minor | 3.x |
|
Feature | No (Only if no choice) | Major | master |
|
Deprecation | Yes (Have to) | Minor | 3.x |
|
Deprecation removal | No (Can't be) | Major | master |
Notes:
- Branch
3.x
is the branch of the latest stable minor release and has to be used for Backward compatible PRs. - If you PR is not Backward Compatible but can be, it must be:
- Changing a function/method signature? Prefer create a new one and deprecate the old one.
- Code deletion? Don't. Please deprecate it instead.
- If your BC PR is accepted, you can do a new one on the
master
branch which removes the deprecated code. - SYMFONY DOC REF (same logic)?
If you have a non-BC PR to propose, please try to create a related BC PR first.
This BC PR should mark every piece of code that needs to be removed / uncommented / reworked
in the corresponding non-BC PR with the following marker comment : NEXT_MAJOR
.
When the BC PR is merged in the stable branch, wait for the stable branch to be
merged in the unstable branch, and then work on your non-BC PR.
For instance, assuming you want to introduce a new method to an existing interface, you should do something like this:
<?php
namespace Foo;
interface BarInterface
{
/**
* NEXT_MAJOR: Uncomment this method
*
* This method does useful stuff.
*/
// public function usefulMethod();
// …
}
In some cases, you might have some code parts that might become superseded by others, but could still be used by the end user.
If the concerned code is not tagged as internal
, it must be deprecated on the stable branch, then removed.
If an alternate usage solution is possible, you MUST provide it in the deprecation message.
The deprecated minor version MUST NOT be provided. Use x
instead. It will be updated when releasing.
Any deprecation MUST be documented in the corresponding UPGRADE-[0-9].x.md
.
The documentation MUST be filled inside the top unreleased section with a sub title.
The NEXT_MAJOR
tag should not be used for deprecation.
The @deprecated
and E_USER_DEPRECATED
key will be searched for before releasing the next major version.
You have three ways to deprecate things.
For class definitions, methods (or first level functions) and properties, use the @deprecated
tag:
/**
* @deprecated since 42.x, to be removed in 43.0. Use Shiny\New\ClassOfTheMonth instead.
*/
final class IAmOldAndUseless
{
}
final class StillUsedClass
{
/**
* @deprecated since 42.x, to be removed in 43.0.
*/
public $butNotThisProperty;
/**
* @deprecated since 42.x, to be removed in 43.0.
*/
public function iAmBatman()
{
echo "But this is not Gotham here.";
}
}
If the deprecated thing is a service, you MUST specify it on the service definition:
<service id="sonata.block.old" class="Sonata\Block\Old">
<argument type="service" id="security.token_storage" />
<deprecated>The "%service_id%" service is deprecated since 42.x and will be removed in 43.0.</deprecated>
</service>
More info: http://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-2-8-deprecated-service-definitions
For everything else, not managed by the @deprecated
tag, you MUST trigger a deprecation message.
<?php
if (/* some condition showing the user is using the legacy way */) {
@trigger_error(
'The '.__METHOD__.' method is deprecated since 42.x, to be removed in 43.0. '.
'Use FooClass::barMethod() instead.',
E_USER_DEPRECATED
);
} else {
// new way of doing things
}
Note that the trigger_error
usage is not necessary if the @deprecated
tag is used.
In the case of a deprecation, unit tests might show your deprecation notice.
You MUST mark such tests with the @group legacy
annotation and if need be,
isolate them in a new test method that can simply be removed in the non-BC PR.
Be aware that pull requests with BC breaks could be rejected or postponed to next major release only if BC is not possible.
If you are not sure what should be done, don't hesitate to open an issue about your PR project.
If you want to change some dependencies, here are the rules:
- Don't add support for a version lower than the current one.
- Don't change the highest supported version to a lower one.
- Lower version dropping is accepted as a Backward Compatible change according to semver,
but some extra rules must be respected here:
- PHP versions that are under the orange zone (Security Support) MUST NOT be dropped on the stable branch.
- PHP versions that are under the green zone (Active Support) MUST NOT be dropped on the master branch.
- If it's a Symfony package, at least the last LTS version MUST be supported, even on master.
- Generally, don't drop dependency version it it doesn't have a big impact on the code.
- Backward Compatible code related to the dropped version MUST be dropped on the same PR. This will allow to see if this version drop is really worth it or not. Please note that we can refuse a version drop at any moment if the gain does not seem sufficient.
Legacy branches are NOT supported at all. Any submitted Pull Request will be immediately closed.
Core team members may cherry-pick some fixes from the stable branch to the legacy one if it's really needed and if the legacy one is not too old (~less than one month).
Sonata is a big project with many contributors, and a big part of the job is being able to understand the code at all times, be it when submitting a PR or looking at the history. Good commit messages are crucial to achieve this goal.
There are already a few articles (or even single purpose websites) about this, we cannot recommend enough the following:
- http://rakeroutes.com/blog/deliberate-git
- http://stopwritingramblingcommitmessages.com
- http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html
To sum them up, the commit message has to be crystal clear and of course, related to the PR content.
The first line of the commit message must be short, keep it under 50 characters. It must say concisely but precisely what you did. The other lines, if needed, should contain a complete description of why you did this.
Bad commit message subject:
Update README.md
Good commit message subject :
Document how to install the project
Also, when you specify what you did avoid commit message subjects with "Fix bug in such and such feature". Saying you are fixing something implies the previous implementation was wrong and yours is right, which might not even be true. Instead, state unquestionable technical facts about your changes, not opinions. Then, in the commit description, explain why you did that and how it fixes something.
call foo::bar() instead of bar::baz()
This fixes a bug that arises when doing this or that, because baz() needs a
flux capacitor object that might not be defined.
Fixes #42
The description is optional but strongly recommended. It could be asked by the team if needed. PR will often lead to complicated, hard-to-read conversations with many links to other web pages.
The commit description should be able to live without what is said in the PR, and should ideally sum it up in a crystal clear way, so that people do not have to open a web browser to understand what you did. Links to PRs/Issues and external references are of course welcome, but should not be considered enough. When you reference an issue, make sure to use one of the keywords described in the dedicated github article.
Good commit message with description :
Change web UI background color to pink
This is a consensus made on #4242 in addition to #1337.
We agreed that blank color is boring and so deja vu. Pink is the new way to do.
(Obviously, this commit is fake. 😉)
Grooming a PR until it is ready to get merged is a contribution by itself. Indeed, why contribute a PR if there are hundreds of PRs already waiting to get reviewed and hopefully, merged? By taking up this task, you will try to speed up this process by making sure the merge can be made with peace of mind.
Before doing anything refrain to dive head-first in the details of the PR and try to see the big picture, to understand the subject of the PR. If the PR fixes an issue, read the issue first. This is to avoid the pain of making a reviewer rework their whole PR and then not merging it.
Things to hunt for :
- missing docs . This is what you should look for first. If you think the PR lacks docs, ask for them, because you will be better at reviewing it if you understand it better, and docs help a lot with that.
- missing tests : Encourage people to do TDD by making clear a PR will not get merged if it lacks tests. Not everything is easy to test though, keep that in mind.
- BC breaks : If there is a BC-break, ask for a deprecation system to be created instead,
and make sure the
master
branch is used. - Unclear pieces of code : does the code use clear, appropriate variable or class names,
or does it use names like
data
,result
,WhateverManager
,SomethingService
? Are exception names still meaningful if you remove theException
suffix? Do all exceptions have a custom message? Is the contributor trying to be clever or to be clear? - Violations of the SOLID principles :
- S : If a class is 3000 lines long, maybe it does too many things?
- O : Is there a big switch statement that might grow in the future?
- L : Does the program behave reasonably when replacing a class with a child class?
- I : Are interfaces small and easy to implement? If not, can they be split into smaller interfaces?
- D : Is the name of a class hardcoded in another class, with the
new
keyword or a static call?
- Spelling / grammar mistakes, including in commit messages or UPGRADE / CHANGELOG notes.
- Dependency modifications : is anything new introduced, if yes is it worth it?
Leave no stone unturned. When in doubt, ask for a clarification. If the clarification seems useful, and does not appear in a code comment or in a commit message, say so and / or make use a squash-merge to customize the commit message. Ideally, the project history should be understandable without an internet connection, and the PR should be understandable without having a look at the changes.
Also, make sure your feedback is actionable, it is important to keep the ball rolling, so if you raise a question, try to also provide solutions.
Applying labels requires write access to PRs, but you can still advise if you do not have them. There are several labels that will help determine what the next version number will be. Apply the first label that matches one of this conditions, in that order:
major
: there is a BC-break. The PR should target themaster
branch.minor
: there is a backwards-compatible change in the API. The PR should target the stable branch.patch
: this fixes an issue (not necessarily reported). The PR should target the stable branch.docs
: this PR is solely about the docs.pedantic
is implied.pedantic
: this change does not warrant a release.
Also if you see that the PR lacks documentation, tests, a changelog note, or an upgrade note, use the appropriate label.
If there are several commits in a PR, make sure you review it commit by commit, so that you can check the commit messages, and make sure the commit are independent and atomic.
Do not merge something you wrote yourself. Do not merge a PR you reviewed alone, instead, merge PRs that have already be reviewed and approved by another reviewer. If the commit history is unclear or irrelevant, prefer the "Squash and merge" feature, otherwise, always use the "Rebase and merge" feature. And finally, use your common sense : if you see a PR about a typo, or if there is a situation (faulty commit, revert needed) maybe you can merge it directly.
Do not merge any merge request dropping a dependency version support.
To achieve that, mark them as RTM
, and mention then on Slack when asking for a release.
This rule should be applied for these reasons:
- Even if it's semver compatible, we don't maintain minor branches. So it's preferable to give priority to bugfixes over version-dropping PRs.
- Some dependencies need a dev-kit update. By the way, you can make a PR on dev-kit and link it to your own.
Thank them for contributing. Encourage them if you feel this is going to be long. In short, try to make them want to contribute again. If they are stuck, try to provide them with code yourself, or ping someone who can help.
Releases can be done by a limited number of persons.
We try to make releases as much as possible, but don't hesitate to mention @sonata-project/release-managers
on your PR/issue comment to ask for a new release if needed.
Other contributors outside this team are not allowed to publish a release but are encouraged to report release requests on the dedicated private Slack channel.
Releasing software is the last step to getting your bugfixes or new features to your user base,
and should be done regularly, so that users are not tempted to use development branches.
To know what you are going to release on branch 42.x, given that the last release on this branch is 42.3.1,
go to https://github.com/sonata-project/SonataCoreBundle/compare/42.3.1...42.x
.
You should see a list of commits, some of which should contain links to pull requests.
First of all, you MUST find the exact datetime of the last release. Go to the project releases section and display the last release page:
Then, click on the commit hash to show it and open the browser dev toolbar from the commit date:
Then you know the exact datetime of the released commit is 2018-04-20T09:47:48Z
. Copy it.
It's important to NOT use the tag datetime because the tag may be written later after the commit.
An alternative way to do this is to issue the following command in your shell:
git describe --abbrev=0 --tags| xargs git show --pretty=format:%aI --no-patch|tail -n 1
After that, go on the pull requests page of the repo and replace the default filter by this one:
base:3.x merged:>2018-04-20T09:47:48Z
base
: The base branch where the PR are merged. It MUST be the current stable branch, or the legacy branch where you want to make a release.merged
: All the pull request merged after the given datetime.
If any of those pull requests is labeled minor
, then the next release should be a minor release (42.4.0).
Otherwise, if there are any pull requests labeled patch
,
the next release should be a patch release (42.3.2).
If there are neither minor nor patch pull requests, all the others should be labeled docs
or pedantic
,
and you should not make a release.
In this case, it will be a patch release.
patch
, minor
, pedantic
or docs
label.
If you find a non-labelled PR or a major
one, a mistake was made and MUST be fixed before the release.
If there are any deprecations, then the release should be minor and the UPGRADE-42.x file should be changed,
moving the instructions explaining how to bypass the deprecation messages,
that should hopefully be there, to a new section named UPGRADE FROM 42.3.1 to 42.4.0
.
UPGRADE 42.x
===========
+UPGRADE FROM 42.3.1 to 42.4.0
+=============================
+
## Deprecated use of `getSchmeckles` in `Sonata\Defraculator\Vortex`
All occurences of 42.x
in comments or deprecation messages should be updating
by resolving x
to its value at the time of the release.
Each non-pedantic (and therefore non-docs) PR should contain a CHANGELOG
section,
that you need to copy manually into the CHANGELOG.md
file.
The title is in the following format :
[42.3.2](https://github.com/sonata-project/SonataNewsBundle/compare/42.3.1...42.3.2) - YYYY-MM-DD
.
The changes above should be added to a signed commit with the following message : 42.3.2
. Nothing else.
You MUST sign the tag with your GPG key, after which all you have to do is push it.
If you don't have push access, you can still create a PR with the relevant changes
and have them signed off by someone who has it.
Commands summary (we assume upstream
corresponds to the Sonata repository):
git commit -am 42.3.2
git tag -s 42.3.2 -m 42.3.2
git push upstream && git push upstream --tags
Copy the changelog entries except the release number line and paste them on the release note form:
Submit the data, and you are done!
Major releases should be done on a regular basis, to avoid branches getting too far from their more stable counterparts: the biggest the gap, the harder the merges are. We use a 3 branch system, which means releasing 42.0.0 implies that:
- the master branch is aliased to 43.x;
- 42.x becomes the stable branch;
- 41.x becomes the legacy branch;
- 40.x is abandoned.
- Every
NEXT_MAJOR
instruction should be followed before the release. - If possible, the latest version of every dependency should be supported
(
composer outdated
shouldn't output anything). - If sensible, the old major versions of every dependency should be dropped.
Before releasing anything, it is best to reduce the gap between branches:
- Merge the legacy branch into the stable branch.
- Merge the stable branch into the unstable branch.
Before abandoning it, the legacy branch MUST receive a last patch version. Likewise, the stable branch MUST receive a last version if that version is minor, it SHOULD receive one is that version is a patch version.
If the current major is 42
, a new 43.x
branch should be created from master,
then a commit should be done on master to bump the branch-alias
and version numbers in the README.
Also, the following files must be created/updated on the new stable branch:
UPGRADE-43.x.md
, containing only the main titleUPGRADE-43.0.md
, containing the upgrade notes fetched from the major PRs.CHANGELOG.md
, containing the changelog of the major PRs.composer.json
, thebranch-alias
MUST be changed to43.x-dev
Push the new branch with a commit containing the modified files and "43.x-dev" as comment.
Finally, a signed tag should be created on the newly-created stable branch and the release note MUST be filled.