Want to fix a bug in Pootle? Want to change the behaviour of an existing feature or add new ones? This section is all about hacking on Pootle, so if you are interested on the topic, keep reading.
Before starting any actual work on the source code, make sure that:
The minimum software packages you need for setting up a development environment include git and a Python interpreter along with the pip installer. Consult the specifics for your operating system in order to get each package installed successfully.
Once you have the basic requirements in place, you will need to install Pootle’s dependencies, which come in shape of Python packages. Instead of installing them system-wide, we recommend using virtualenv (and virtualenvwrapper for easing the management of multiple virtualenvs). This way you can install all the dependencies at specific versions without interfering with system-wide packages. You can test on different Python/Django versions in parallel as well.
For installing the dependencies in an isolated environment, we will use virtualenv – more specifically virtualenvwrapper, which eases the process of managing and switching between multiple virtual environments. Installing virtualenwrapper will pull in virtualenv as a dependency.
$ sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper
virtualenvwrapper will need to be configured in order to specify where to store the created environments.
$ export WORKON_HOME=~/envs
$ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh # Or /usr/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
Note
You may want to add the above-mentioned commands and environment
variables to your .bashrc
file (or whatever file your shell uses for
initializing user customizations).
Now that the commands provided by virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper are available, we can start creating our virtual environment.
$ mkvirtualenv <env-name>
Replace <env-name>
with a meaningful name that describes the environment
you are creating. mkvirtualenv accepts any options that
virtualenv accepts. We could for example specify to use the Python
2.6 interpreter by passing the -p python2.6
option.
Note
After running mkvirtualenv, the newly created environment is activated. To deactivate it just run:
(env-name) $ deactivate
To activate a virtual environment again simply run:
$ workon <env-name>
Time to clone Pootle’s source code repository. The main repository lives under translate/pootle in GitHub.
Note
If you have a GitHub account, fork the main translate/pootle
repository and replace the repository URL with your own fork.
(env-name) $ git clone https://github.com/translate/pootle.git
Next, install Pootle software dependencies using pip. The
requirements are stored in the requirements
directory. The
dev.txt
requirements will install some extra packages to aid
development.
(env-name) $ cd pootle
(env-name) $ pip install -r requirements/dev.txt
Note
Some requirements may depend on external packages. For these you may need to install extra packages on your system in order to complete their installation.
Install Pootle into your virtualenv. This makes it easy to run Pootle locally and is needed for various development actitivies.
(env-name) $ pip install -e .
With all the dependencies installed within the virtual environment, Pootle is almost ready to run. In development environments you will want to use settings that vastly differ from those used in production environments.
For that purpose there is a sample configuration file with settings adapted for
development scenarios, pootle/settings/90-dev-local.conf.sample
. Copy
this file and rename it by removing the .sample extension:
(env-name) $ cp pootle/settings/90-dev-local.conf.sample pootle/settings/90-dev-local.conf
Note
To learn more about how settings work in Pootle read the settings documentation.
Once the configuration is in place, you’ll need to setup the database schema and add initial data.
(env-name) $ python manage.py migrate
(env-name) $ python manage.py initdb
Now ensure that you have built the assets by following the instructions for frontend development.
Finally, run the development server.
(env-name) $ python manage.py runserver
Once all is done, you can start the development server anytime by enabling the
virtual environment (using the workon command) and running the
manage.py runserver
command.
Happy hacking!!
Any time you want to fix a bug or work on a new feature, create a new local branch:
$ git checkout -b <my_new_branch>
Then safely work there, create the needed commits and once the work is ready for being incorporated upstream, either:
HEAD
of the master
branch using
git diff or git format-patch and attach it to the
affected issue.When creating commits take into account the following:
As far as possible, try to commit individual changes in individual commits. Where different changes depend on each other, but are related to different parts of a problem / solution, try to commit them in quick succession.
If a change in the code requires some change in the documentation then all those changes must be in the same commit.
If code and documentation changes are unrelated then it is recommended to put them in separate commits, despite that sometimes it is acceptable to mix those changes in the same commit, for example cleanups changes both in code and documentation.
Begin the commit message with a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the change, followed by a blank line and then a more thorough (and sometimes optional) description.
Cleanups
Another example:
Factor out common behavior for whatever
These reduces lines of code to maintain, and eases a lot the maintenance
work.
Also was partially reworked to ease extending it in the future.
If your change fixes a bug in the tracker, mention the bug number. This way the bug is automatically closed after merging the commit.
Docs: Update code for this thing
Now the docs are exact and represent the actual behavior introduced in
commits ef4517ab and abc361fd.
Fixes #2399
If you are reverting a previous commit, mention the sha1 revision that is being reverted.
Revert "Fabric: Cleanup to use the new setup command"
This reverts commit 5c54bd4.