Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given. If you want to read about our guidelines for contributing, we are using C4 and you can’t find it here: C4

You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions

Report Bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/bigchaindb/bigchaindb-driver/issues.

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

  • Your operating system name and version.
  • Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
  • Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix Bugs

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Implement Features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with “enhancement” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Make a Feature Request or Proposal

To make a feature request or proposal, write a BigchaindB Enhancement Proposal (BEP):

We use COSS to handle BEPs, you can read about it here: COSS

Write Documentation

bigchaindb-driver could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official bigchaindb-driver docs, in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at https://github.com/bigchaindb/bigchaindb-driver/issues.

If you are proposing a feature:

  • Explain in detail how it would work.
  • Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.
  • Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome :)

Get Started!

Ready to contribute? See the Installation Guide for Developers page.

Pull Request Guidelines

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

  1. The pull request should include tests.
  2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.rst.
  3. The pull request should work for Python 3.5, and pass the flake8 check. Check https://travis-ci.org/bigchaindb/bigchaindb-driver/pull_requests and make sure that the tests pass for all supported Python versions.
  4. Follow the pull request template while creating new PRs, the template will be visible to you when you create a new pull request.

Tips

Development Environment with Docker

Depending on what you are doing, you may need to run at least one BigchainDB node. You can use the docker-compose.yml file to run a node, and perform other tasks that depend on the running node. To run a BigchainDB node, (for development), you start a MongoDB and Tendermint node, followed by the linked BigchainDB node:

# Implicitly creates a MongoDB and Tendermint instance
$ docker-compose up -d bigchaindb

You can monitor the logs:

$ docker-compose logs -f

Additionally, we have a nice Makefile to make things easier for everyone. Some helpful commands are

>>> make
install          Install the package to the active Python's site-packages
start            Run BigchainDB driver from source and daemonize it (stop with make stop)
stop             Stop BigchainDB driver
reset            Stop and REMOVE all containers. WARNING: you will LOSE all data stored in BigchainDB server.
test             Run all tests once or specify a file/test with TEST=tests/file.py::Class::test
test-watch       Run all, or only one with TEST=tests/file.py::Class::test, tests and wait. Every time you change code, test/s will be run again.
docs             Generate Sphinx HTML documentation, including API docs
lint             Check style with flake8
cov              Check code coverage and open the result in the browser
clean            Remove all build, test, coverage and Python artifacts
release          package and upload a release
dist             builds source (and not for now, wheel package)
clean-build      Remove build artifacts
clean-pyc        Remove Python file artifacts
clean-test       Remove test and coverage artifacts

Tests

To run a subset of tests:

$ docker-compose run --rm bigchaindb-driver pytest -v tests/test_driver.py

Important

When running tests, unless you are targeting a test that does not require a connection with the BigchainDB server, you need to run the BigchainDB, MongoDB and Tendermint servers:

$ docker-compose up -d bigchaindb

Dependency on Bigchaindb

By default, the development requirements, BigchainDB server Dockerfile, and .travis.yml are set to depend from BigchainDB’s master branch to more easily track changes against BigchainDB’s API.