HACKING.md

HACKING

The following commands will be useful for anyone writing patches:

./setup.py test      # Run local unit test suite
./setup.py pylint    # Run a pylint script against the codebase

Any patches shouldn't change the output of 'test' or 'pylint'. The 'pylint' requires pylint and pycodestyle to be installed.

Our pylint script uses a blacklist rather than a whitelist approach, so it could throw some false positives or useless messages. If you think your patch exposes one of these, bring it up on the mailing list.

'test*' have a --debug option if you are hitting problems. For more options, use ./setup.py test --help.

One useful way to manually test virt-manager's UI is using libvirt's unit test driver. From the source directory, Launch virt-manager like:

virt-manager --connect test://$PWD/tests/testdriver.xml

This testdriver has many fake XML definitions that can be used to see each bit of virt-manager's UI. It also enables testing the various wizards without having to alter your host virt config.

Also, there's a few standalone specialty tests:

./setup.py test_urls            # Test fetching media from distro URLs
./setup.py test_initrd_inject   # Test --initrd-inject

We use glade-3 for building virt-manager's UI. It is recommended you have a fairly recent version of glade-3. If a small UI change seems to rewrite the entire glade file, you likely have a too old (or too new :) glade version.

Submitting patches

Patches should be developed against a git checkout and not a source release(see git repository).

Patches should be sent to the mailing list.

Using git format-patch/send-email is preferred, but an attachment with format-patch output is fine too.

Small patches are acceptable via github pull-request, but anything non-trivial should be sent to the mailing list.

Translations

Translations are handled at fedora.zanata.org. Please register for a Fedora account and request access to a translation team, as described at Translate on Zanata.

And contribute to virt-manager at Zanata.