HACKING.md

HACKING

The following commands will be useful for anyone writing patches:

./setup.py test      # Run local unit test suite
./setup.py pylint    # Run a pylint script against the codebase
./setup.py codespell # Run a codespell script against the codebase

Any patches shouldn't change the output of 'test', 'pylint' or 'codespell'. The 'pylint' requires pylint and pycodestyle to be installed. The 'codespell' requires codespell to be installed.

Our pylint script uses a blacklist rather than a whitelist approach, so it could throw some false positives or useless messages. If you think your patch exposes one of these, bring it up on the mailing list.

'test*' have a --debug option if you are hitting problems. For more options, use ./setup.py test --help.

One useful way to manually test virt-manager's UI is using libvirt's unit test driver. From the source directory, Launch virt-manager like:

virt-manager --connect test://$PWD/tests/testdriver.xml

This testdriver has many fake XML definitions that can be used to see each bit of virt-manager's UI. It also enables testing the various wizards without having to alter your host virt config.

Also, there's a few standalone specialty tests:

./setup.py test_urls            # Test fetching media from distro URLs
./setup.py test_initrd_inject   # Test --initrd-inject

We use glade-3 for building virt-manager's UI. It is recommended you have a fairly recent version of glade-3. If a small UI change seems to rewrite the entire glade file, you likely have a too old (or too new :) glade version.

Submitting patches

Patches should be developed against a git checkout and not a source release(see git repository).

Patches should be sent to the mailing list.

Using git format-patch/send-email is preferred, but an attachment with format-patch output is fine too.

Small patches are acceptable via github pull-request, but anything non-trivial should be sent to the mailing list.

Translations

Translations are handled at fedora.zanata.org. Please register for a Fedora account and request access to a translation team, as described at Translate on Zanata.

And contribute to virt-manager at Zanata.