Thank you for your interest in contributing to Ostracon! Before
contributing, it may be helpful to understand the goal of the project. The goal
of Ostracon is to develop a BFT consensus engine robust enough to
support permissionless value-carrying networks. While all contributions are
welcome, contributors should bear this goal in mind in deciding if they should
target the main Ostracon project or a potential fork. When targeting the
main Ostracon project, the following process leads to the best chance of
landing changes in main
.
All work on the code base should be motivated by a Github Issue. Search is a good place start when looking for places to contribute. If you would like to work on an issue which already exists, please indicate so by leaving a comment.
All new contributions should start with a Github Issue. The issue helps capture the problem you're trying to solve and allows for early feedback. Once the issue is created the process can proceed in different directions depending on how well defined the problem and potential solution are. If the change is simple and well understood, maintainers will indicate their support with a heartfelt emoji.
How to pick a number for the ADR?
Find the largest existing ADR number and bump it by 1.
When the problem as well as proposed solution are well understood,
changes should start with a draft
pull request
against main
. The draft signals that work is underway. When the work
is ready for feedback, hitting "Ready for Review" will signal to the
maintainers to take a look.
Each stage of the process is aimed at creating feedback cycles which align contributors and maintainers to make sure:
- Contributors don’t waste their time implementing/proposing features which won’t land in
main
. - Maintainers have the necessary context in order to support and review contributions.
Please note that Go requires code to live under absolute paths, which complicates forking.
While my fork lives at https://github.com/ebuchman/ostracon
,
the code should never exist at $GOPATH/src/github.com/ebuchman/ostracon
.
Instead, we use git remote
to add the fork as a new remote for the original repo,
$GOPATH/src/github.com/Finschia/ostracon
, and do all the work there.
For instance, to create a fork and work on a branch of it, I would:
- Create the fork on GitHub, using the fork button.
- Go to the original repo checked out locally (i.e.
$GOPATH/src/github.com/Finschia/ostracon
) git remote rename origin upstream
git remote add origin git@github.com:ebuchman/basecoin.git
Now origin
refers to my fork and upstream
refers to the Ostracon version.
So I can git push -u origin main
to update my fork, and make pull requests to ostracon from there.
Of course, replace ebuchman
with your git handle.
To pull in updates from the origin repo, run
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/main
(or whatever branch you want)
We use go modules to manage dependencies.
That said, the main
branch of every Ostracon repository should just build
with go get
, which means they should be kept up-to-date with their
dependencies so we can get away with telling people they can just go get
our
software.
Since some dependencies are not under our control, a third party may break our
build, in which case we can fall back on go mod tidy
. Even for dependencies under our control, go helps us to
keep multiple repos in sync as they evolve. Anything with an executable, such
as apps, tools, and the core, should use dep.
Run go list -u -m all
to get a list of dependencies that may not be
up-to-date.
When updating dependencies, please only update the particular dependencies you
need. Instead of running go get -u=patch
, which will update anything,
specify exactly the dependency you want to update, eg.
GO111MODULE=on go get -u github.com/tendermint/tm-db@master
.
We use Protocol Buffers along with gogoproto to generate code for use across Ostracon Core.
For linting and checking breaking changes, we use buf. If you would like to run linting and check if the changes you have made are breaking then you will need to have docker running locally. Then the linting cmd will be make proto-lint
and the breaking changes check will be make proto-check-breaking
.
We use Docker to generate the protobuf stubs. To generate the stubs yourself, make sure docker is running then run make proto-gen
.
Every fix, improvement, feature, or breaking change should be made in a
pull-request that includes an update to the CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
file.
Changelog entries should be formatted as follows:
- [module] \#xxx Some description about the change (@contributor)
Here, module
is the part of the code that changed (typically a
top-level Go package), xxx
is the pull-request number, and contributor
is the author/s of the change.
It's also acceptable for xxx
to refer to the relevant issue number, but pull-request
numbers are preferred.
Note this means pull-requests should be opened first so the changelog can then
be updated with the pull-request's number.
There is no need to include the full link, as this will be added
automatically during release. But please include the backslash and pound, eg. \#2313
.
Changelog entries should be ordered alphabetically according to the
module
, and numerically according to the pull-request number.
Changes with multiple classifications should be doubly included (eg. a bug fix that is also a breaking change should be recorded under both).
Breaking changes are further subdivided according to the APIs/users they impact.
Any change that effects multiple APIs/users should be recorded multiply - for
instance, a change to the Blockchain Protocol
that removes a field from the
header should also be recorded under CLI/RPC/Config
since the field will be
removed from the header in RPC responses as well.
User-facing repos should adhere to the trunk based development branching model: https://trunkbaseddevelopment.com/.
Libraries need not follow the model strictly, but would be wise to.
The SDK utilizes semantic versioning.
The main development branch is main
.
Every release is maintained in a release branch named vX.Y.Z
.
Pending minor releases have long-lived release candidate ("RC") branches. Minor release changes should be merged to these long-lived RC branches at the same time that the changes are merged to main
.
Note all pull requests should be squash merged except for merging to a release branch (named vX.Y
). This keeps the commit history clean and makes it
easy to reference the pull request where a change was introduced.
The latest state of development is on main
, which must never fail make test
. Never force push main
, unless fixing broken git history (which we rarely do anyways).
To begin contributing, create a development branch either on github.com/Finschia/ostracon
, or your fork (using git remote add origin
).
Make changes, and before submitting a pull request, update the CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
to record your change. Also, run either git rebase
or git merge
on top of the latest main
. (Since pull requests are squash-merged, either is fine!)
Update the UPGRADING.md
if the change you've made is breaking and the
instructions should be in place for a user on how he/she can upgrade it's
software (ABCI application, Ostracon-based blockchain, light client, wallet).
Once you have submitted a pull request label the pull request with either R:minor
, if the change should be included in the next minor release, or R:major
, if the change is meant for a major release.
Sometimes (often!) pull requests get out-of-date with main
, as other people merge different pull requests to main
. It is our convention that pull request authors are responsible for updating their branches with main
. (This also means that you shouldn't update someone else's branch for them; even if it seems like you're doing them a favor, you may be interfering with their git flow in some way!)
Ensure that you base and target your PR on the main
branch.
All feature additions should be targeted against main
. Bug fixes for an outstanding release candidate
should be targeted against the release candidate branch.
It is also our convention that authors merge their own pull requests, when possible. External contributors may not have the necessary permissions to do this, in which case, a member of the core team will merge the pull request once it's been approved.
Before merging a pull request:
- Ensure pull branch is up-to-date with a recent
main
(GitHub won't let you merge without this!) - Run
make test
to ensure that all tests pass - Squash merge pull request
If your change should be included in a minor release, please also open a PR against the long-lived minor release candidate branch (e.g., rc1/v0.33.5
) immediately after your change has been merged to main
.
You can do this by cherry-picking your commit off main
:
$ git checkout rc1/v0.33.5
$ git checkout -b {new branch name}
$ git cherry-pick {commit SHA from `main`}
# may need to fix conflicts, and then use git add and git cherry-pick --continue
$ git push origin {new branch name}
After this, you can open a PR. Please note in the PR body if there were merge conflicts so that reviewers can be sure to take a thorough look.
We follow the Go style guide on commit messages. Write concise commits that start with the package name and have a description that finishes the sentence "This change modifies Ostracon to...". For example,
cmd/debug: execute p.Signal only when p is not nil
[potentially longer description in the body]
Fixes #nnnn
Each PR should have one commit once it lands on main
; this can be accomplished by using the "squash and merge" button on Github. Be sure to edit your commit message, though!
- Start on
main
- Run integration tests (see
test_integrations
in Makefile) - Prepare release in a pull request against
main
(to be squash merged):- Copy
CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
to top ofCHANGELOG.md
; if this release had release candidates, squash all the RC updates into one - Run
python ./scripts/linkify_changelog.py CHANGELOG.md
to add links for all issues - run
bash ./scripts/authors.sh
to get a list of authors since the latest release, and add the github aliases of external contributors to the top of the changelog. To lookup an alias from an email, trybash ./scripts/authors.sh <email>
- Reset the
CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
- Bump P2P and block protocol versions in
version.go
, if necessary - Bump ABCI protocol version in
version.go
, if necessary - Make sure all significant breaking changes are covered in
UPGRADING.md
- Add any release notes you would like to be added to the body of the release to
release_notes.md
.
- Copy
- Push a tag with prepared release details (this will trigger the release
vX.X.0
)git tag -a vX.X.x -m 'Release vX.X.x'
git push origin vX.X.x
- Update the changelog.md file on
main
with the releases changelog. - Delete any RC branches and tags for this release (if applicable)
Minor releases are done differently from major releases: They are built off of long-lived release candidate branches, rather than from main
.
- Checkout the long-lived release candidate branch:
git checkout rcX/vX.X.X
- Run integration tests:
make test_integrations
- Prepare the release:
- copy
CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
to top ofCHANGELOG.md
- run
python ./scripts/linkify_changelog.py CHANGELOG.md
to add links for all issues - run
bash ./scripts/authors.sh
to get a list of authors since the latest release, and add the GitHub aliases of external contributors to the top of the CHANGELOG. To lookup an alias from an email, trybash ./scripts/authors.sh <email>
- reset the
CHANGELOG_PENDING.md
- bump P2P and block protocol versions in
version.go
, if necessary - bump ABCI protocol version in
version.go
, if necessary - make sure all significant breaking changes are covered in
UPGRADING.md
- Add any release notes you would like to be added to the body of the release to
release_notes.md
.
- copy
- Create a release branch
release/vX.X.x
off the release candidate branch:git checkout -b release/vX.X.x
git push -u origin release/vX.X.x
- Note that all branches prefixed with
release
are protected once pushed. You will need admin help to make any changes to the branch.
- Once the release branch has been approved, make sure to pull it locally, then push a tag.
git tag -a vX.X.x -m 'Release vX.X.x'
git push origin vX.X.x
- Create a pull request back to
main
with the CHANGELOG & version changes from the latest release.- Remove all
R:minor
labels from the pull requests that were included in the release. - Do not merge the release branch into
main
.
- Remove all
- Delete the former long lived release candidate branch once the release has been made.
- Create a new release candidate branch to be used for the next release.
- start from the existing release branch you want to backport changes to (e.g. v0.30) Branch to a release/vX.X.X branch locally (e.g. release/v0.30.7)
- Cherry pick the commit(s) that contain the changes you want to backport (usually these commits are from squash-merged PRs which were already reviewed)
- Follow steps 2 and 3 from Major Release
- Push changes to release/vX.X.X branch
- Open a PR against the existing vX.X branch
Before creating an official release, especially a major release, we may want to create a
release candidate (RC) for our friends and partners to test out. We use git tags to
create RCs, and we build them off of RC branches. RC branches typically have names formatted
like RCX/vX.X.X
(or, concretely, RC0/v0.34.0
), while the tags themselves follow
the "standard" release naming conventions, with -rcX
at the end (vX.X.X-rcX
).
(Note that branches and tags cannot have the same names, so it's important that these branches have distinct names from the tags/release names.)
- Start from the RC branch (e.g.
RC0/v0.34.0
). - Create the new tag, specifying a name and a tag "message":
git tag -a v0.34.0-rc0 -m "Release Candidate v0.34.0-rc0
- Push the tag back up to origin:
git push origin v0.34.0-rc4
Now the tag should be available on the repo's releases page. - Create a new release candidate branch for any possible updates to the RC:
git checkout -b RC1/v0.34.0; git push origin RC1/v0.34.0
Unit tests are located in _test.go
files as directed by the Go testing
package. If you're adding or removing a
function, please check there's a TestType_Method
test for it.
Run: make test
Integration tests are also located in _test.go
files. What differentiates
them is a more complicated setup, which usually involves setting up two or more
components.
Run: make test_integrations
End-to-end tests are used to verify a fully integrated Ostracon network.
See README for details.
Run:
cd test/e2e && \
make && \
./build/runner -f networks/ci.toml
If you're changing the code in consensus
package or node
package, please make sure to
replicate all the changes in ./test/maverick/consensus
and ./test/maverick/node
**. Maverick is a
byzantine node used to assert that the validator gets punished for malicious
behavior.
See README for details.
NOTE: if you're just submitting your first PR, you won't need to touch these most probably (99.9%).
For components, that have been formally verified using TLA+, it may be possible to generate tests using a combination of the Apalache Model Checker and tendermint-rs testgen util.
At the moment, we have model-based tests for the light client, located in the
./light/mbt
directory.
Run: cd light/mbt && go test
NOTE: if you're just submitting your first PR, you won't need to touch these most probably (99.9%).
Fuzz tests can be found inside the
./test/fuzz
directory. See README.md for details.
Run: cd test/fuzz && make fuzz-{PACKAGE-COMPONENT}
NOTE: if you're just submitting your first PR, you won't need to touch these most probably (99.9%).
Jepsen tests are used to verify the linearizability property of the Ostracon consensus. They are located in a separate repository -> https://github.com/tendermint/jepsen. Please refer to its README for more information.
If you contribute to the RPC endpoints it's important to document your changes in the Openapi file
To test your changes you should install nodejs
and run:
npm i -g dredd
make build-contract-tests-hooks
make contract-tests
WARNING: these are currently broken due to https://github.com/apiaryio/dredd not supporting complete OpenAPI 3.
This command will popup a network and check every endpoint against what has been documented.