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Contributing to MetacatUI

🎉 First off, thanks for contributing! 🎉

✨ Types of Contributions

We welcome all types of contributions, including bug fixes, feature enhancements, bug reports, documentation, graphics, and many others. You might consider contributing by:

  • Report a bug or request a new feature in our issue tracker
  • Fix a bug and contribute the code with a Pull Request
  • Write or edit some documentation, such as this file!
  • Sharing helpful tips or FAQ-type answers with users or future contributors
  • Ask or answer a question on our discussions board
  • Create screenshots or tutorials of features of MetacatUI
  • Answer questions on our mailing list or Slack team
  • ...

MetacatUI is an open source project, and we welcome full participation in the project. Contributions are reviewed and suggestions are made to increase the value of MetacatUI to the community. We strive to incorporate code, documentation, and other useful contributions quickly and efficiently while maintaining a high-quality repository software product.

If you have any questions about contributing, please feel free to ask on the MetacatUI discussions board or on the DataONE Slack team.

🐈‍⬛ About MetacatUI

MetacatUI is a JavaScript application that provides a user interface for the DataONE network of data repositories. It is built using the Backbone.js framework and the RequireJS module loader. MetacatUI is designed to be a modular, extensible, and customizable application that can be used to build a variety of data repository interfaces. The application is built using a set of Backbone models, collections, and views that interact with the DataONE REST API to provide a user-friendly interface for uploading, documenting, searching, viewing, and downloading data packages.

More about MetacatUI can be found in the MetacatUI documentation site, including installation instructions.

🌱 Getting Started with Contributions

🔧 Setting Up Your Environment

  1. Fork the MetacatUI repository on GitHub.
  2. Clone your forked repository to your local machine using git clone {your-forked-repo-url}.
  3. Install dependencies using npm install to set up your development environment.
  4. Configure your local instance to point to a test DataONE repository by editing the config.js file in the src/config directory: 
    MetacatUI.AppConfig = {
  root: "/",
  theme: "arctic",
  baseUrl: "https://dev.nceas.ucsb.edu",
  d1CNBaseUrl: "https://cn-stage.test.dataone.org/",
  metacatContext: "knb",
};
  5. Start the development server using npm start and navigate to http://localhost:3000/ to view the application.

✍️ Making Changes and Submitting Contributions

  1. Document your plans by creating or adding to an issue
    • If an issue does not exist for the feature or bug you are working on, create one in the issue tracker.
    • Make a comment on the corresponding issue with your plan for the changes.
  2. Create a new branch for your changes using git checkout -b {bugfix|feature}-{issue-number}-{short-description}.
  3. Develop your features or bug fixes. Refresh your browser to see the changes in action.
  4. Format your code automatically using npm run format.
  5. Lint your changes using npx eslint your-changed-file.js and address any issues.
  6. Run unit tests with npm test to ensure all tests pass, including any new tests you add for your functionality.
  7. Check that the doc site will build using npm run jsdoc-dry-run to make sure there are no JSDoc warnings.
  8. Commit your changes and push your branch to your forked repository.

💡 You may wish to automate steps 9 to 12 in your IDE

📤 Submitting a Pull Request

  1. On GitHub, create a pull request to the develop branch of the main MetacatUI repository.
    • Summarize the changes made in the pull request description.
  2. Our team will review your pull request. We may request changes to ensure quality before approval.
  3. Once reviewed and approved, your contributions will be merged into the develop branch by our team, and you’re done! 🎉

🎨 Code Style

While there has been significant variability in the coding styles applied historically in MetacatUI, we are committed to standardizing our codebase to

improve readability, maintainability, and consistency and to facilitate contributions from the community. With this goal in mind, we have adopted a defined set of coding conventions and tools to enforce these standards. All new or modified code should adhere to these conventions such that the codebase can gradually be brought into alignment with these standards.

🖋 Formatting

We use Prettier to enforce consistent code formatting with the configuration in the .prettierrc file. To run prettier manually, use npm run format to automatically fix formatting issues or npm run format-check to check for formatting issues. Pull requests will automatically check for formatting issues and suggest fixes.

🔍 Linting

We use ESLint to enforce code quality and style issues. Our ESLint configuration is based on the Airbnb style guide with modifications to support our current AMD/RequireJS module pattern. As we work to adopt newer JavaScript standards, we may need to adjust our ESLint rules to support these changes. We encourage contributors to follow the ESLint rules as closely as possible when modifying existing code or adding new code.

To run ESLint manually, use npm run lint to see linting issues. Alternatively, run npx eslint your-file.js to lint a specific file. Pull requests will automatically be check for linting issues on changed code and suggest fixes.

🔬 Testing

Unit and integration tests. MetacatUI has a full suite of unit tests and integration tests in the tests subdirectory. Any new code developed should include a robust set of unit tests for each public method, as well as integration tests from new feature sets. Tests should fully exercise the feature to ensure that it responds correctly to both good data inputs and various classes of corrupt or bad data. All tests should pass before submitting a PR or merging to develop.

Tests are automatically run via GitHub Actions. Check the root README.md file for this GitHub Actions status badge and make sure it says "Passing":

Tests Status

Read more documentation about how tests are run and viewed in /test/README.md

📚 Documentation

All JavaScript code should be fully documented with JSDoc comments. Pull requests will automatically checked for complete JSDoc comments.

When documenting code, please follow these guidelines:

For Models and Views:

  • Gives a brief overview of what the class / file does and give a few short example of how you might use the class / file.
  • Create a screenshot of the View and use the @screenshot tag to include it in the built docs.
  • Use the @classcategory tag to organize the class file in the built docs navigational menu

For Model and View methods:

  • Say what each class method does and how to use it (use @param and @returns)
  • Use @example tags to give examples of parameters and return values
  • Use @fires to indicate Backbone Events that are fired by a method

For Model and View attributes:

  • Describe the purpose of the attribute, its @default value, and one or more @examples

For everything:

  • Use the @since tag to indicate the version the class/method/attribute was added
  • Use @deprecated for deprecated APIs and features
  • Use @link to link to other JSDoc pages when mentioning other classes, attributes, and methods (e.g. {@link Model#method})

Before merging a feature branch to the develop branch, build the MetacatUI documentation website and make sure that your documentation is displaying correctly and is thorough.

Things to check:

  • There are no JSDoc build errors or warnings
  • The class shows up in the right category in the class navigation menu
  • All class methods and attributes are documented and displaying correctly
  • Screenshots of views are displaying correctly

📐 Key Quality Checks for Contributions

When submitting a Pull Request to MetacatUI, it's essential to adhere not only to the above criteria on tests, formatting, and documentation, but also to additional aspects that ensure the quality and functionality of your contributions. Here are key points that reviewers will check during the code review process:

  1. Theme Compatibility: Test your changes across all standard themes included in MetacatUI (such as arctic, dataone, default, knb) and those in the metacatui-themes repository (drp and sctld). This ensures consistency and compatibility across different visual presentations.

  2. Responsive Design: Ensure that your changes perform well on various screen sizes, including mobile devices.

  3. Component Impact Analysis: If you modify an existing model, collection, or view, review all instances where that component is utilized within MetacatUI. This is crucial to prevent unintended impacts, especially considering that our test coverage is not yet exhaustive.

  4. Performance Consideration: Be mindful of the performance implications of your changes. This is particularly important for substantial additions, as we aim to maintain or improve the current performance levels of MetacatUI.

  5. Error Handling and Messaging: Incorporate robust error handling in your code and ensure that any error messages are clear and user-friendly. If one component triggers an error for any reason, it should not disrupt the functionality of the entire application.

  6. Dependency Management: When adding or updating dependencies, evaluate their necessity and impact on the project size. Avoid redundancy and prefer dependencies with a strong maintenance history and a large supporting community, as this increases the likelihood of long-term support.

  7. User Status Consideration: If applicable, test the functionality of your changes for both signed-in and non-signed-in users.

  8. Documentation Updates: In addition to updating JSDocs, if your changes affect any aspect covered in the MetacatUI guides (docs/guide), make the necessary updates. For significant features requiring configuration by MetacatUI administrators, consider adding a new guide.

  9. Security Assessment: Ensure that any security implications of your changes are thoroughly considered and addressed.

🚀 Development Workflow

Our development workflow is organized through the git repository and follows a structured branching and release strategy.

🌳 Branches

main. Releases are merged from the develop branch to the main branch, and the resulting commit is tagged with the release tag (e.g., 2.4.0). The tip of the main branch always reflects the most recent release of the software. The version number in all configuration files and the README on the main branch follows semantic versioning and should always be set to the current release version, for example, 2.8.5.

develop. The develop branch is a stable branch that is constantly maintained in a state ready for release. Commits should only be pushed to this branch once they are ready to be deployed to production immediately after being pushed. Any unreleased code changes on the develop branch represent changes that have been tested and staged for the next release. The tip of the develop branch always represents the set of features that have been staged for the next release. Commits are added to the develop branch via a pull request or after consultation with the designated MetacatUI product owner.

feature. to isolate development on a specific set of capabilities, especially if it may be disruptive to other developers working on the main develop branch, feature branches should be created.

Feature branches are named as feature- + #{issue} + -{short-description}-. With {issue} being the Github issue number related to that new feature. e.g. feature-#1456-new-search.

All feature-* branches should be frequently merged with changes from develop to ensure that the feature branch stays up to date with other features that have been tested and are awaiting release. Thus, each feature-* branch represents an opportunity for integration testing of the set of features intended to work together for a particular release.

dev-X.X. Development branches named after their minor version number can be used when a patch release needs to be created that is behind the main develop branch.

bugfix. A final branch type are bugfix branches, which work the same as feature branches, but fix bugs rather than adding new functionality. Bugfix branches are named similarly, following the pattern: bugfix- + {issue} + -{short-description}, with {issue} being the GitHub issue number related to that bug. e.g. bugfix-83-fix-name-display.

🔀 Workflow Diagram

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gitGraph
    commit id: "1" tag: "v1.0.0"
    branch develop
    checkout develop
    commit id: "2"
    branch feature-A
    commit id: "3"
    commit id: "4"
    checkout develop
    merge feature-A id: "5"
    commit id: "6"
    commit id: "7"
    branch feature-B
    commit id: "8"
    commit id: "9"
    checkout develop
    merge feature-B  id: "10" type: NORMAL
    checkout main
    merge develop id: "11" tag: "v1.1.0"
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🚀 Release Process

  1. Our release process starts with integration testing in a develop branch. Once all changes that are desired in a release are merged into the develop branch, we run the full set of tests on a clean checkout of the develop branch.
  2. After testing, the develop branch is merged to main.
  3. Then the main branch can be tagged with the new version number (e.g. 2.11.2). We use semantic versioning for version numbers.
  4. Releases can be downloaded from the Github releases page for the MetacatUI repository.

📄 Contributor license agreement

In order to clarify the intellectual property license granted with Contributions from any person or entity, you agree to a Contributor License Agreement ("CLA") with the Regents of the University of California (hereafter, the "Regents").

  1. Definitions. "You" (or "Your") shall mean the copyright owner or legal entity authorized by the copyright owner that is making this Agreement with the Regents. For legal entities, the entity making a Contribution and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity are considered to be a single Contributor. For the purposes of this definition, "control" means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity. "Contribution" shall mean any original work of authorship, including any modifications or additions to an existing work, that is intentionally submitted by You to the Regents for inclusion in, or documentation of, any of the products owned or managed by the Regents (the "Work"). For the purposes of this definition, "submitted" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Regents or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the Regents for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by You as "Not a Contribution."
  2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Regents and to recipients of software distributed by the Regents a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works.
  3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Regents and to recipients of software distributed by the Regents a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by You that are necessarily infringed by Your Contribution(s) alone or by combination of Your Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If any entity institutes patent litigation against You or any other entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that your Contribution, or the Work to which you have contributed, constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to that entity under this Agreement for that Contribution or Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
  4. You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the above license. If your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property that you create that includes your Contributions, you represent that you have received permission to make Contributions on behalf of that employer, that your employer has waived such rights for your Contributions to the Regents, or that your employer has executed a separate Corporate CLA with the Regents.
  5. You represent that each of Your Contributions is Your original creation (see section 7 for submissions on behalf of others). You represent that Your Contribution submissions include complete details of any third-party license or other restriction (including, but not limited to, related patents and trademarks) of which you are personally aware and which are associated with any part of Your Contributions.