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============================
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Guidelines for modifying bzr
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============================
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(The current version of this document is available in the file ``HACKING``
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in the source tree, or at http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/current/hacking.html)
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* New functionality should have test cases. Preferably write the
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test before writing the code.
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In general, you can test at either the command-line level or the
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internal API level. See Writing Tests below for more detail.
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* Try to practice Test-Driven Development. before fixing a bug, write a
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test case so that it does not regress. Similarly for adding a new
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feature: write a test case for a small version of the new feature before
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starting on the code itself. Check the test fails on the old code, then
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add the feature or fix and check it passes.
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* Exceptions should be defined inside bzrlib.errors, so that we can
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see the whole tree at a glance.
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* Imports should be done at the top-level of the file, unless there is
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a strong reason to have them lazily loaded when a particular
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function runs. Import statements have a cost, so try to make sure
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they don't run inside hot functions.
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* Module names should always be given fully-qualified,
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i.e. ``bzrlib.hashcache`` not just ``hashcache``.
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* Commands should return non-zero when they encounter circumstances that
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the user should really pay attention to - which includes trivial shell
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Recommended values are
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1. Conflicts in merge-like operations, or changes are present in
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2. Unrepresentable diff changes (i.e. binary files that we cannot show
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3. An error or exception has occurred.
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We have a commitment to 6 months API stability - any supported symbol in a
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release of bzr MUST NOT be altered in any way that would result in
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breaking existing code that uses it. That means that method names,
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parameter ordering, parameter names, variable and attribute names etc must
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not be changed without leaving a 'deprecated forwarder' behind. This even
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applies to modules and classes.
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If you wish to change the behaviour of a supported API in an incompatible
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way, you need to change its name as well. For instance, if I add a optional keyword
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parameter to branch.commit - that's fine. On the other hand, if I add a
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keyword parameter to branch.commit which is a *required* transaction
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object, I should rename the API - i.e. to 'branch.commit_transaction'.
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When renaming such supported API's, be sure to leave a deprecated_method (or
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_function or ...) behind which forwards to the new API. See the
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bzrlib.symbol_versioning module for decorators that take care of the
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details for you - such as updating the docstring, and issuing a warning
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when the old api is used.
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For unsupported API's, it does not hurt to follow this discipline, but its
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not required. Minimally though, please try to rename things so that
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callers will at least get an AttributeError rather than weird results.
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Standard parameter types
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------------------------
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There are some common requirements in the library: some parameters need to be
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unicode safe, some need byte strings, and so on. At the moment we have
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only codified one specific pattern: Parameters that need to be unicode
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should be check via 'bzrlib.osutils.safe_unicode'. This will coerce the
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input into unicode in a consistent fashion, allowing trivial strings to be
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used for programmer convenience, but not performing unpredictably in the
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presence of different locales.
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If you change the behaviour of a command, please update its docstring
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in bzrlib/commands.py. This is displayed by the 'bzr help' command.
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If you make a user-visible change, please add a note to the NEWS file.
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The description should be written to make sense to someone who's just
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a user of bzr, not a developer: new functions or classes shouldn't be
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mentioned, but new commands, changes in behaviour or fixed nontrivial
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bugs should be listed. See the existing entries for an idea of what
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Within each release, entries in the news file should have the most
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user-visible changes first. So the order should be approximately:
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* changes to existing behaviour - the highest priority because the
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user's existing knowledge is incorrect
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* new features - should be brought to their attention
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* bug fixes - may be of interest if the bug was affecting them, and
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should include the bug number if any
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* major documentation changes
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* changes to internal interfaces
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People who made significant contributions to each change are listed in
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parenthesis. This can include reporting bugs (particularly with good
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details or reproduction recipes), submitting patches, etc.
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Functions, methods, classes and modules should have docstrings
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describing how they are used.
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The first line of the docstring should be a self-contained sentence.
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For the special case of Command classes, this acts as the user-visible
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documentation shown by the help command.
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The docstrings should be formatted as reStructuredText_ (like this
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document), suitable for processing using the epydoc_ tool into HTML
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.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
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.. _epydoc: http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/
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Please write PEP-8__ compliant code.
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One often-missed requirement is that the first line of docstrings
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should be a self-contained one-sentence summary.
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__ http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html
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Functions, methods or members that are in some sense "private" are given
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a leading underscore prefix. This is just a hint that code outside the
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implementation should probably not use that interface.
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We prefer class names to be concatenated capital words (``TestCase``)
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and variables, methods and functions to be lowercase words joined by
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underscores (``revision_id``, ``get_revision``).
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For the purposes of naming some names are treated as single compound
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words: "filename", "revno".
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Consider naming classes as nouns and functions/methods as verbs.
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``revision_id`` not ``rev_id`` or ``revid``
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Functions that transform one thing to another should be named ``x_to_y``
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(not ``x2y`` as occurs in some old code.)
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Python destructors (``__del__``) work differently to those of other
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languages. In particular, bear in mind that destructors may be called
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immediately when the object apparently becomes unreferenced, or at some
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later time, or possibly never at all. Therefore we have restrictions on
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what can be done inside them.
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0. Never use a __del__ method without asking Martin/Robert first.
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1. Never rely on a ``__del__`` method running. If there is code that
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must run, do it from a ``finally`` block instead.
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2. Never ``import`` from inside a ``__del__`` method, or you may crash the
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3. In some places we raise a warning from the destructor if the object
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has not been cleaned up or closed. This is considered OK: the warning
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may not catch every case but it's still useful sometimes.
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In some places we have variables which point to callables that construct
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new instances. That is to say, they can be used a lot like class objects,
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but they shouldn't be *named* like classes:
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> I think that things named FooBar should create instances of FooBar when
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> called. Its plain confusing for them to do otherwise. When we have
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> something that is going to be used as a class - that is, checked for via
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> isinstance or other such idioms, them I would call it foo_class, so that
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> it is clear that a callable is not sufficient. If it is only used as a
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> factory, then yes, foo_factory is what I would use.
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To make startup time faster, we use the ``bzrlib.lazy_import`` module to
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delay importing modules until they are actually used. ``lazy_import`` uses
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the same syntax as regular python imports. So to import a few modules in a
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from bzrlib.lazy_import import lazy_import
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lazy_import(globals(), """
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import bzrlib.transport
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At this point, all of these exist as a ``ImportReplacer`` object, ready to
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be imported once a member is accessed.
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Modules versus Members
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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While it is possible for ``lazy_import()`` to import members of a module
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wehn using the ``from module import member`` syntax, it is recommended to
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only use that syntax to load sub modules ``from module import submodule``.
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This is because variables and classes can frequently be used without
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needing a sub-member for example::
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lazy_import(globals(), """
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from module import MyClass
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return isinstance(x, MyClass)
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This will incorrectly fail, because ``MyClass`` is a ``ImportReplacer``
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object, rather than the real class.
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Passing to other variables
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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It also is bad form to pass ``ImportReplacer`` objects to other variables.
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Because the replacer only knows about the original name, it is unable to
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replace other variables. The ``ImportReplacer`` class will raise an
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exception if it can figure out that this happened. But it is not always
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possible to know, so bugs can be secretly waiting to be exposed.
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(The strategy described here is what we want to get to, but it's not
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consistently followed in the code at the moment.)
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bzrlib is intended to be a generically reusable library. It shouldn't
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write messages to stdout or stderr, because some programs that use it
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might want to display that information through a GUI or some other
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We can distinguish two types of output from the library:
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1. Structured data representing the progress or result of an
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operation. For example, for a commit command this will be a list
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of the modified files and the finally committed revision number
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These should be exposed either through the return code or by calls
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to a callback parameter.
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A special case of this is progress indicators for long-lived
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operations, where the caller should pass a ProgressBar object.
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2. Unstructured log/debug messages, mostly for the benefit of the
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developers or users trying to debug problems. This should always
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be sent through ``bzrlib.trace`` and Python ``logging``, so that
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it can be redirected by the client.
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The distinction between the two is a bit subjective, but in general if
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there is any chance that a library would want to see something as
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structured data, we should make it so.
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The policy about how output is presented in the text-mode client
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should be only in the command-line tool.
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In general tests should be placed in a file named test_FOO.py where
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FOO is the logical thing under test. That file should be placed in the
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tests subdirectory under the package being tested.
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For example, tests for merge3 in bzrlib belong in bzrlib/tests/test_merge3.py.
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See bzrlib/selftest/test_sampler.py for a template test script.
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Tests can be written for the UI or for individual areas of the library.
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Choose whichever is appropriate: if adding a new command, or a new command
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option, then you should be writing a UI test. If you are both adding UI
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functionality and library functionality, you will want to write tests for
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both the UI and the core behaviours. We call UI tests 'blackbox' tests
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and they are found in ``bzrlib/tests/blackbox/*.py``.
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When writing blackbox tests please honour the following conventions:
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1. Place the tests for the command 'name' in
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bzrlib/tests/blackbox/test_name.py. This makes it easy for developers
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to locate the test script for a faulty command.
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2. Use the 'self.run_bzr("name")' utility function to invoke the command
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rather than running bzr in a subprocess or invoking the
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cmd_object.run() method directly. This is a lot faster than
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subprocesses and generates the same logging output as running it in a
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subprocess (which invoking the method directly does not).
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3. Only test the one command in a single test script. Use the bzrlib
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library when setting up tests and when evaluating the side-effects of
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the command. We do this so that the library api has continual pressure
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on it to be as functional as the command line in a simple manner, and
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to isolate knock-on effects throughout the blackbox test suite when a
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command changes it name or signature. Ideally only the tests for a
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given command are affected when a given command is changed.
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We make selective use of doctests__. In general they should provide
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*examples* within the API documentation which can incidentally be tested. We
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don't try to test every important case using doctests -- regular Python
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tests are generally a better solution.
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Most of these are in ``bzrlib/doc/api``. More additions are welcome.
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__ http://docs.python.org/lib/module-doctest.html
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Currently, bzr selftest is used to invoke tests.
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You can provide a pattern argument to run a subset. For example,
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to run just the blackbox tests, run::
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./bzr selftest -v blackbox
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To skip a particular test (or set of tests), you need to use a negative
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./bzr selftest '^(?!.*blackbox)'
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Errors and exceptions
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=====================
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Errors are handled through Python exceptions. They can represent user
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errors, environmental errors or program bugs. Sometimes we can't be sure
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at the time it's raised which case applies. See bzrlib/errors.py for
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details on the error-handling practices.
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Integer identifier for a revision on the main line of a branch.
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Revision 0 is always the null revision; others are 1-based
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indexes into the branch's revision history.
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The ``Transport`` layer handles access to local or remote directories.
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Each Transport object acts like a logical connection to a particular
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directory, and it allows various operations on files within it. You can
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*clone* a transport to get a new Transport connected to a subdirectory or
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Transports are not used for access to the working tree. At present
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working trees are always local and they are accessed through the regular
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Python file io mechanisms.
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Transports work in URLs. Take note that URLs are by definition only
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ASCII - the decision of how to encode a Unicode string into a URL must be
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taken at a higher level, typically in the Store. (Note that Stores also
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escape filenames which cannot be safely stored on all filesystems, but
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this is a different level.)
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The main reason for this is that it's not possible to safely roundtrip a
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URL into Unicode and then back into the same URL. The URL standard
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gives a way to represent non-ASCII bytes in ASCII (as %-escapes), but
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doesn't say how those bytes represent non-ASCII characters. (They're not
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guaranteed to be UTF-8 -- that is common but doesn't happen everywhere.)
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For example if the user enters the url ``http://example/%e0`` there's no
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way to tell whether that character represents "latin small letter a with
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grave" in iso-8859-1, or "latin small letter r with acute" in iso-8859-2
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or malformed UTF-8. So we can't convert their URL to Unicode reliably.
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Equally problematic if we're given a url-like string containing non-ascii
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characters (such as the accented a) we can't be sure how to convert that
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to the correct URL, because we don't know what encoding the server expects
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for those characters. (Although this is not totally reliable we might still
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accept these and assume they should be put into UTF-8.)
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A similar edge case is that the url ``http://foo/sweet%2Fsour`` contains
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one directory component whose name is "sweet/sour". The escaped slash is
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not a directory separator. If we try to convert URLs to regular Unicode
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paths this information will be lost.
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This implies that Transports must natively deal with URLs; for simplicity
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they *only* deal with URLs and conversion of other strings to URLs is done
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elsewhere. Information they return, such as from ``list_dir``, is also in
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the form of URL components.
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Unicode and Encoding Support
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============================
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This section discusses various techniques that Bazaar uses to handle
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characters that are outside the ASCII set.
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When a ``Command`` object is created, it is given a member variable
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accessible by ``self.outf``. This is a file-like object, which is bound to
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``sys.stdout``, and should be used to write information to the screen,
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rather than directly writing to ``sys.stdout`` or calling ``print``.
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This file has the ability to translate Unicode objects into the correct
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representation, based on the console encoding. Also, the class attribute
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``encoding_type`` will effect how unprintable characters will be
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handled. This parameter can take one of 3 values:
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Unprintable characters will be represented with a suitable replacement
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marker (typically '?'), and no exception will be raised. This is for
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any command which generates text for the user to review, rather than
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for automated processing.
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For example: ``bzr log`` should not fail if one of the entries has text
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that cannot be displayed.
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Attempting to print and unprintable character will cause a UnicodeError.
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This is for commands that are intended more as scripting support, rather
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than plain user review.
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For exampl: ``bzr ls`` is designed to be used with shell scripting. One
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use would be ``bzr ls --null --unknows | xargs -0 rm``. If ``bzr``
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printed a filename with a '?', the wrong file could be deleted. (At the
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very least, the correct file would not be deleted). An error is used to
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indicate that the requested action could not be performed.
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Do not attempt to automatically convert Unicode strings. This is used
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for commands that must handle conversion themselves.
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For example: ``bzr diff`` needs to translate Unicode paths, but should
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not change the exact text of the contents of the files.
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``bzrlib.urlutils.unescape_for_display``
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----------------------------------------
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Because Transports work in URLs (as defined earlier), printing the raw URL
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to the user is usually less than optimal. Characters outside the standard
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set are printed as escapes, rather than the real character, and local
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paths would be printed as ``file://`` urls. The function
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``unescape_for_display`` attempts to unescape a URL, such that anything
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that cannot be printed in the current encoding stays an escaped URL, but
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valid characters are generated where possible.
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If you'd like to propose a change, please post to the
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bazaar-ng@lists.canonical.com list with a patch, bzr changeset, or link to a
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branch. Please put '[patch]' in the subject so we can pick them out, and
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include some text explaining the change. Remember to put an update to the NEWS
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file in your diff, if it makes any changes visible to users or plugin
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developers. Please include a diff against mainline if you're giving a link to
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Please indicate if you think the code is ready to merge, or if it's just a
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draft or for discussion. If you want comments from many developers rather than
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to be merged, you can put '[rfc]' in the subject lines.
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Anyone is welcome to review code. There are broadly three gates for
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* Doesn't reduce test coverage: if it adds new methods or commands,
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there should be tests for them. There is a good test framework
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and plenty of examples to crib from, but if you are having trouble
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working out how to test something feel free to post a draft patch
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* Doesn't reduce design clarity, such as by entangling objects
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we're trying to separate. This is mostly something the more
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experienced reviewers need to help check.
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* Improves bugs, features, speed, or code simplicity.
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Code that goes in should pass all three.
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If you read a patch please reply and say so. We can use a numeric scale
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of -1, -0, +0, +1, meaning respectively "really don't want it in current
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form", "somewhat uncomfortable", "ok with me", and "please put it in".
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Anyone can "vote". (It's not really voting, just a terse expression.)
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If something gets say two +1 votes from core reviewers, and no
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vetos, then it's OK to come in. Any of the core developers can bring it
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into their integration branch, which I'll merge regularly. (If you do
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so, please reply and say so.)
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Making installers for OS Windows
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================================
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To build a win32 installer, see the instructions on the wiki page:
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http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrWin32Installer
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HACKING
