ovos-skill-projen

This projen project template is used to create a new OVOS Skill, which can be used with both OVOS and Neon.AI voice assistants. It can also be used to retrofit an existing MycroftSkill to work with OVOS' most current development practices.

Installing projen

Projen was created by primarily TypeScript developers working in the AWS CDK ecosystem, so it is written in TypeScript and requires Node.js to run.

Generally, it is recommended to use nvm (Node Version Manager) to install Node.js on Linux and macOS. Instructions for installing nvm can be found at github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.

After you've installed Node, projen can be installed globally with:

npm install -g projen

Generally, most projen users alias the npx projen command to pj for convenience. This can be done with:

alias pj='npx projen'

Add that to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file to make it permanent. Be sure to run source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.zshrc to reload your shell after adding the line above.

Create a new skill template

In a new directory, run:

npx projen new ovosskill --from "@mikejgray/ovos-skill-projen@latest"

NOTE: This repo is not yet available on NPM. Please add the following to your ~/.npmrc file (create one if it doesn't exist), with a GitHub token that has packages:read permissions:

//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=ghp_aeojghxotdj583r38fgzrh48
@mikejgray:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

After the skill has been created with default options, a file called .projenrc.json will be generated. This file contains all of the options used to create the skill, and can be edited to change the skill's configuration. For a full list of supported options, see API.md.

Most commonly, you will want to change the name, author, authorAddress, authorHandle, skillClass, and repositoryUrl options. If you prefer to have an explicitly named directory for your source code instead of the default src, then packageDir should also be set. The type option should be left alone, as it is used to tell projen which project template to use.

Example:

{
  "type": "@mikejgray/ovos-skill-projen.OVOSSkillProject",
  "name": "test-skill",
  "author": "Mike Gray",
  "authorAddress": "[email protected]",
  "authorHandle": "mikejgray",
  "repositoryUrl": "https://github.com/mikejgray/test-skill",
  "packageDir": "test_skill",
  "skillClass": "TestSkill"
}

After editing .projenrc.json, run pj to regenerate the project files. This can automatically keep your project up to date with the latest changes, including managing your setup.py file.

Create a new PHAL plugin template

In a new directory, run:

npx projen new ovosphalproject --from "@mikejgray/ovos-skill-projen@latest"

The instructions are the same as for creating a new skill template, except that you have an additional option to set the PHAL plugin as admin or not. The default is false, indicating that the PHAL plugin will not run as root.

NOTE: If you do set the PHAL plugin to admin and thus run as root, you will also need to update your OVOS config to explicitly allow your root plugins. This is a security risk and should only be done if you understand the implications. For more information about Admin PHAL, see the OVOS technical manual.

Example OVOS config:

{
  "PHAL": {
    "admin": "ovos-phal-plugin-helloworld": {"enabled": true}
  }
}

setup.py ownership

Note that projen takes ownership of the setup.py file, and the expectation is that manual edits are not allowed. If you need to make changes to the setup.py file, you should do so by editing .projenrc.json and running pj to regenerate the file.

Taking manual ownership of the repository

If you prefer not to keep the skill repository under projen's management, simply delete node_modules, .projenrc.json, .gitattributes, .projen, and package.json from the skill directory. You can also delete .github/workflows if you do not want to use GitHub Actions automation workflows.

Retrofitting Mycroft skills (WIP, please open issues if it doesn't work for your use case)

If you have an existing Mycroft skill that you'd like to convert to an OVOS skill, you can do so by running the following command in your skill directory:

projen new ovosskill --from "@mikejgray/ovos-skill-projen@latest" --retrofit

This will:

• Add the OVOS skill requirements to your requirements.txt file, creating one if it does not exist
• Overwrite your .gitignore file with a standard Python .gitignore plus node_modules and .DS_Store
• Create a dev branch, if one does not exist, and commit the changes to it
• Add all of OVOS' standard GitHub Actions workflows to your .github/workflows directory
• Move files in ui, intent, dialog, etc. directories to locale, respecting the language folders within
• Replace Mycroft imports with their OVOS replacements in your __init__.py file, assuming it is in the root of the repo

It will not:

• Overwrite your README.md file, if it exists, or create one if it does not exist
• Create sample code
• Touch your LICENSE file
  • Note that official OVOS and Neon skills have skill license requirements that may not be compatible with your existing license, if you want to submit it as part of one of those organizations. Please review the OVOS skill license requirements. If you are not submitting your skill to OVOS or Neon, you can use any license you like, and should set skillLicenseTest: false in your .projenrc.json file.

Once the retrofit is complete, you can review the changes needed for modernization with grep TODO __init__.py. This project attempts to handle as many as possible, but due to differences in code style and structure, some changes will need to be made manually.

If your skill code is not in __init__.py in the repository root, the retrofit code won't be able to find it. PRs welcome to add support for other skill structures.