profanity/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Profanity

Build

Please follow the build section in our user guide. You might also take a look at the Dockerfile.* in the root directory.

Submitting patches

We recommend for people to always work on a dedicated git branch for each fix or feature. Don't work on master. So that they can easily pull master and rebase their work if needed.

For fixing (reported) bugs we usually use git checkout -b fix/issuenumber-somedescription. When working on a new feature we usually use git checkout -b feature/optionalissuenumber-somedescription.

However this is not a rule just a recommendation to keep an overview of things. If your change isn't a bugfix or new feature you can also just use any branch name.

Commit messages

Write commit messages that make sense. Explain what and why you change. Write in present tense. Please give this guideline a read.

GitHub

We would like to encourage people to use GitHub to create pull requests. It makes it easy for us to review the patches, track WIP branches, organize branches with labels and milestones, and help others to see what's being worked on.

Also see the blogpost Contributing a Patch via GitHub.

E-Mail

In case GitHub is down or you can't use it for any other reason, you can send a patch to our mailing list.

We recommend that you follow the workflow mentioned above. And create your patch using the git-format-patch tool: git format-patch master --stdout > feature.patch

Another git service

We prefer if you create a pull request on GitHub. Then our team can easily request reviews. And we have the history of the review saved in one place.

If using GitHub is out of the question but you are okay using another service (i.e.: GitLab, codeberg) then please message us in the MUC or send us an email. We will then pull from your repository and merge manually.

Rules

• When fixing a bug, describe it and how your patch fixes it.
• When fixing a reported issue add an Fixes https://github.com/profanity-im/profanity/issues/23 in the commit body.
• When adding a new feature add a description of the feature and how it should be used (workflow).
• If your patch adds a new configuration option add this to the profrc.example file.
• If your patch adds a new theming option add this to the theme_template file.
• Each patch or pull request should only contain related modifications.
• Run the tests and code formatters before submitting (c.f. Chapter 'Check everything' of this README).
• When changing the UI it would be appreciated if you could add a before and after screenshot for comparison.
• Squash fixup commits into one
• If applicable, document how to test the functionality

Hints and Pitfalls

• When adding a new hotkey/shortcut make sure it's not registered in Profanity already. And also that it's not a default shortcut of readline.
• We ship a .git-blame-ignore-revs file containing banal commits which you will most likely want to ignore when using git blame. In case you are using vim and fugitive command Gblame Git blame --ignore-revs-file=.git-blame-ignore-revs might be helpful in your vimrc. You can also set the blame.ignoreRevsFile option in your git config to have git blame generally ignore the listed commits.

Coding style

Follow the style already present ;-)

To make this easier for you we created a .clang-format file. You'll need to have clang-format installed. We currently use version 21, which is also the version enforced by our CI in .github/workflows/main.yml.

Then just run make format before you do any commit.

It might be a good idea to add a git pre-commit hook. So git automatically runs clang-format before doing a commit.

You can add the following snippet to .git/hooks/pre-commit:

for f in $(git diff --cached --name-only)
do
    if [[ "$f" =~ \.(c|h)$ ]]; then
        clang-format -i $f
    fi
done

If you feel embarrassed every time the CI fails you can add the following snippet to .git/hooks/pre-push:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
./ci-build.sh

This will run the same tests that the CI runs and refuse the push if it fails. Note that it will run on the actual content of the repository directory and not what may have been staged/committed.

If you're in a hurry you can add the --no-verify flag when issuing git push and the pre-push hook will be skipped.

Note: We provide a config file that describes our coding style for clang. But due to a mistake on their side it might happen that you can get a different result that what we expect. See here and here for details. We will try to always run latest clang-format.

In cases where you want to disable automatic formatting for a specific block of code (e.g. a complex lookup table), you can use the following comments:

/* clang-format off */
// your code
/* clang-format on */

Finding mistakes

Test your changes with the following tools to find mistakes.

Unit tests

Run make check to run the unit tests with your current configuration or ./ci-build.sh to check with different switches passed to configure.

Writing unit tests

We use the cmocka testing framework for unit tests.

Test files are located in tests/unittests and should mirror the directory structure of the src/ directory. For example, if you are testing src/xmpp/jid.c, the corresponding test file should be tests/unittests/xmpp/test_jid.c.

Naming Convention

Test functions must follow a behavior-driven naming convention using double underscores (__) as semantic separators:

[unit]__[verb]__[scenario]

• unit: The name of the function or module being tested.
• verb: A descriptive verb of the outcome (returns, is, updates, shows, triggers, fails).
• scenario: The specific condition or input being tested.

Examples:

• jid_create__returns__null_from_null
• p_contact_is_available__is__false_when_offline
• cmd_connect__shows__usage_when_no_server_value
• str_replace__returns__one_substr

Adding a new test

When adding a new test file:

1. Create the .c and .h files in the appropriate subdirectory of tests/unittests.
2. Register the test functions in tests/unittests/unittests.c within the all_tests array.
3. Add the new source file to unittest_sources in both meson.build and Makefile.am.

valgrind

We provide a suppressions file prof.supp. It is a combination of the suppressions for shipped with glib2, python and custom rules.

G_DEBUG=gc-friendly G_SLICE=always-malloc valgrind --tool=memcheck --track-origins=yes --leak-check=full --leak-resolution=high --num-callers=30 --show-leak-kinds=definite --log-file=profval --suppressions=prof.supp ./profanity

There's also the option to create a "personalized" suppression file with the up-to-date glib2 and python suppressions.

make my-prof.supp

After executing this, you can replace the --suppressions=prof.supp argument in the above call, by --suppressions=my-prof.supp.

clang

Running the clang static code analyzer helps improving the quality too.

make clean
scan-build make
scan-view ...

Finding typos

We include a .codespellrc configuration file for codespell in the root directory. Before committing it might make sense to run codespell to see if you made any typos.

You can run the make spell command for this.

Full check

Run the central quality check script before submitting a patch. This runs the spell checker, code formatter, and unit tests.

If using Autotools:

make doublecheck

If using Meson:

meson compile doublecheck

Alternatively, you can run the script directly:

./scripts/quality-check.sh --fix-formatting --meson  # or --autotools

Pre-commit hook

It is highly recommended to install the quality check script as a git pre-commit hook. This will automatically check your staged changes for spelling and formatting issues every time you commit.

To install the hook:

./scripts/quality-check.sh --install

If you need to bypass the formatting check (e.g. due to a clang-format version mismatch), you can set the SKIP_FORMAT environment variable:

SKIP_FORMAT=1 git commit