Contribution Guidelines

Code Requirements and Style Guidelines

python-3.6 is the minimum python version target for sos. All code contributions must function on this version.
- This is due to downstream requirements for distributions that ship sos. We do not break supported downstreams.
Code contributions must adhere to PEP8 style guidelines. The flake8 linter is used to ensure this compliance.
- Of particular note is nesting a list over multiple lines. Established sos-style is to indent the list contents with one item per line, with the opening and closing brackets in line with the calling method. For example:
```
self.add_copy_spec([
    '/some/path/collection',
    '/another/path/collection'
])
```
  - This nesting style does not apply to parameters in method definitions.
- sos uses spaces for indentation with a tab-width of 4.
Sphinx style is recommended when writing docstrings, though this is not a hard requirement as long as the docstring content is clear and easily understandable.
f-strings are required for all string interpolation instead of format() or legacy string substitution approaches.

Submitting Pull requests:

Commit messages should be split over multiple lines where necessary and are (with the exception of e.g. long command, log, or other output that should be included verbatim) hard-wrapped at 72 characters.
Please write clear commit subjects and messages
- The subject should make it clear what the patch changes for e.g.:
  
  [archive] Fix TarArchive permission handling
  
  is preferred over:
  
  Fix permission handling
- Commits that affect a single plugin should be tagged with the plugin name in brackets in the subject line, for e.g.:
  
  [networking] Add NetworkManager nmcli support
- Include any issues the code fixes (e.g. Closes: #1) on a separate line
- If working around python or other external behavior describe this in the full commit message for e.g.:

commit 6501013bb780161e941f5e078a6ed7052f670a51
Author: Bryn M. Reeves <bmr@redhat.com>
Date:   Mon Jun 2 15:27:10 2014 +0100

    Make sure grub password regex handles all cases
    
    The regex to match passwords in grub.conf needs to handle both
    the --md5 and non-md5 cases and to apply the substitution only
    to the secret part (password or password hash).
    
    This needs to deal with the fact that python will return 'None'
    for unmatched pattern groups leading to an exception in re.subn()
    if not all referenced groups match for a given string (in contrast
    to e.g. the perl approach of treating these groups as the empty
    string).
    
    Make this explicit by using an empty alternate in the possibly
    unmatched '--md5' group:
    
                r"(password\s*)(--md5\s*|\s*)(.*)",
                r"\1\2********"
    
    Signed-off-by: Bryn M. Reeves <bmr@redhat.com>

Each developer should fork sos into their accounts repository.
- Not required, but advisable to use feature/patch branches when working with new code.
All pull requests should be against main branch
We avoid merge commits in main so branches may need to be rebased over the main-du-jour prior to merging
All unit tests must pass before the pull request is accepted.
- Testing for sos is automated - a CirrusCI build is run for each pull request.
- To save time developers can enable local git test hooks
All commits must be accompanied by a Signed-off-by: Firstname Lastname <email@example.com>
- This sign-off indicates that the contributor acknowledges/accepts/etc the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO).
  - Effectively, you are saying "I am either the author of these changes or have the permission of the author and I am entitled to contribute these changes under the project license".
- <email at example dot com> and other obfuscations are fine too.
- Use git commit -s to automatically add a Signed-off-by with your configured git user details.
Make sure you are following pep8 style guidelines
All regex substitutions (i.e. postproc() obfuscations) must include an example in comments
- Required as of 4.1. Older regex substitutions may not have examples, but these should be updated over time.

Optional but very helpful

Any functional tests we should be aware of in order to verify the pull requests.
Where possible a test case for the in-tree test suite. Unittests are currently run via nose, integration tests are run via avocado.
- See the existing cases in tests/ for examples and How to Write a Test for an in-depth explanation.

License Header and Copyright Assignment

A header must be included in any new python source files that may be added to the project. This header is copied below for convenience, however any python file within the sos/ directory can be referenced as well.

# This file is part of the sos project: https://github.com/sosreport/sos
#
# This copyrighted material is made available to anyone wishing to use,
# modify, copy, or redistribute it subject to the terms and conditions of
# version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
#
# See the LICENSE file in the source distribution for further information.

Like many open source projects, sos is distributed under the GPL. This can generally be understood to be a "copyleft" license. That being said, contributors will notice that (nearly) every source file within the project has a copyright line included with the license header.

Going into depth about why this is the case is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say it is a requirement that any new source file contributed to the project that is included in packaged releases (in short, anything in the bin/ or sos/ directories) have a copyright line above the license header.

In general, the format of this copyright line should be similar to the following:

# Copyright (C) <Year> <Company (optional)> <Contributor Name> <<Contributor Email>>

For example:

The company assignment is optional and is determined by the individual making the contribution. If you are contributing to sos as part of a job function, consult with your legal team to decide if you need to assign it to your employer or not. If you are not making the contribution as part of a job function, feel free to omit any company assignment and simply include your name and email (using an email obfuscation as in commit messages is fine).

Maintainers

The sos team follows a 2 person review process. When a pull request comes in it will be assigned reviewers from the sosreport team. Both reviewers must approve the pull request before a merge can take place.

The previous usage of the labels Needs Second ACK and ACK ready for merge will be deprecated in favor of using GitHub's builtin review functionality. The additional labels such as Needs DCO will continue to be used to provide additional context to the pull requests.

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