ansible/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Ansible

It is required that you read the following information to learn how to contribute to this project.

Branch Info

Here's how to understand the branches.

• The devel branch corresponds to the latest ongoing release
• Various release-X.Y branches exist for previous releases
• All feature work happens on the development branch.
• Major bug fixes will be made to the last release branch only
• See CHANGELOG.md for release notes to track each release.

Patch Instructions

Contributions to the core and modules are greatly welcome.

• Required Process:
  • Submit github pull requests to the "ansible/devel" branch for features
  • Fixes for bugs may also be submitted to "ansible/release-X.Y" for the last release
  • Make sure "make tests" passes before submitting any requests.
• Bonus points:
  • Joining the mailing list
  • Fixing bugs instead of sending bug reports.
  • Using squash merges
  • Updating the "rst/*" files in the "docsite/" directory and "docs/" manpage content
  • Adding more unit tests
• Avoid:
  • Sending patches to the mailing list directly.
  • Sending feature pull requests to the 'release' branch instead of the devel branch
  • Sending pull requests to mpdehaan's personal ansible fork.
  • Sending pull requests about more than one feature in the same pull request.
  • Whitespace restructuring
  • Large scale refactoring without a discussion on the list

Coding Standards

We're not too strict on style considerations, but we require:

• python 2.6 compliant code, unless in ansible modules, then python 2.4 compliant code (no 'with', etc)
• 4-space indents, no tabs except in Makefiles
• under_scores for method names and variables, not camelCase
• GPLv3 license headers on all files, with copyright on new files with your name on it
• no single-line if statements, deeply nested list comprehensions, or clever use of metaclasses -- keep it simple
• comments where appropriate

Testing Requirements

Automation tests are run by "make tests" and contain a mixture of integration and "unit" level tests. To run the tests you need the following:

• nose must be installed - https://nose.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
• ansible tests require paramiko, PyYAML python modules, and python 2.6+.
• Some tests require additional components (facter, ohai) and will be skipped if not available.
• Your user environment should allow "ssh 127.0.0.1" without a password - so a key held in ssh-agent and an authorized_keys entry.

If your module does not require any additional dependencies beyond ansible-core, it is a good idea to write some tests for the module.

Contributors License Agreement

By contributing you agree that these contributions are your own (or approved by your employer) and you grant a full, complete, irrevocable copyright license to all users and developers of the project, present and future, persusant to the license of the project.