Newbie Guide for Windows People Working on Minor Bugs

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Revision as of 21:45, 29 August 2012 by Ninetydegrees (Talk | contribs)

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Warning: This guide is currently being rewritten to reflect the new workflow. Some things may be unclear or erroneous and some things may be missing. Please be patient.
Note: Feel free to correct, expand, do anything which could make this better and clearer. ^_^


What do you need and why?

Because you're on Windows, you have to use quite a number of tools to access and manage things so this part might seem a little daunting. The good news is that 1) you're used to being flexible and resourceful, right? 2) once you've got everything set up things will be much simpler and intuitive.

So what do you need?

  1. You need a Github account to be able to fetch the Dreamwith code, create your own copies of it, and upload your own changes. This is both where all the Dreamwidth code comes from and where your own code will end on but it's only a gateway: you can't do much on github.com itself.
  2. You need a Dreamhack to see what your changes will do on the site for real. Think of a Dreamhack as an online mirror of the Dreamwidth site which you get to play with and modify.
  3. You need PuTTY to connect GitHub to your Dreamhack, to connect your Dreamhack to GitHub, and access and manage everything. In short, PuTTY is your true command center.
  4. You need WinSCP to visualize your Dreamhack files and be able to open them in a text editor. It's pretty much like Explorer for your Dreamhack.
  5. You need a text editor to edit your files.
  6. You need a Bugzilla account to find bugs, files bugs and upload patches.

Create an account on GitHub

Go to GitHub, click on 'sign up and pricing' and create a free account. I suggest you pick a username people are familiar with and the same username you'll have on your Bugzilla account.


Get a Dreamhack

Apply for a Dreamhack by filling this form. The two important fields are 'your desired username' and 'your email address'. Your username is used to manage your Dreamhack and to create the URL where your Dreamhack will be located at so you can pick anything. Your email address is used to send you a welcome e-mail which contains important information as well as various alerts. You can pick any of your existing email addresses or choose to create an email account entirely devoted to your development work.

Once you're done, you should get an e-mail with your login username and a password. Don't lose it.


Install PuTTY

  • Download 'Windows installer for everything except PuTTYtel' .exe file at PuTTY and install it.
  • Run PuTTY. In the configuration window, enter "hack.dreamwidth.net" for the host name. Go to Connection/Data and enter the username/login given to you in the welcome e-mail. It should be something like dh-username.
  • Click on Open. If you get a pop-up message about a key, click Yes.
  • Enter the password given to you in the welcome e-mail when asked. Note that no characters are displayed and the cursor won't move. It's normal.
  • Change your password by typing: 
passwd
  • Your default Dreamhack account is called system. Type this to set its password: 
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/make_system.pl


Install WinSCP

  • Install WinSCP. During the installation, you may be asked about the mode you prefer: Commander and Explorer. Commander works like an FTP client: a partitioned window with your computer files on one side and the Dreamhack files on the other. Explorer will only display your Dreamhack files and works like Windows's Explorer. I prefer this mode because I rarely need to access my computer files but choose what's easiest for you.
  • Use "hack.dreamwidth.net" for the host name. Enter your username and the password you typed when you did passwd on PuTTY. Click on Save then on Login.


Get a good text editor

While you can use Notepad, I recommend Notepad++ instead. It's free, simple and will make editing much easier.


Create a Bugzilla account

Simply click here.

N.B. As [info]mark explained here, go to Name and Password and enter your name following this format: Name [:username]. 'Name' can be your real name, a nickname, your username again, etc. You don't have to give your real name if you don't want to.


Set things up

On your GitHub account

You need to fork the Dreamwidth code onto your own account. Forking is like cloning and branching. It will copy the code and also label your copy as being a branch (a fork) of the original Dreamwidth code so that we know the two are connected.

Dreamwidth is divided into two parts: a open-source part called 'dw-free', and a private part called 'dw-nonfree'. The private part is composed of elements which are specific to dreamwidth.org and can't be used on other sites (the logo for example) and external elements Dreamwidth is allowed to use on its own site but not redistribute to other sites.


On your Dreamhack

Now you need to 'import' both of these onto your Dreamhack and link them to the original Dreamwidth repositories on GitHub so you can easily fetch updates.

To do so, follow all the steps from this point on until you start your server again (but skip the 'non-dreamhack users' section, of course).


Further configuration steps

These are not mandatory but will make your life easier.


Change some git settings

On PuTTY, I suggest going through all the steps mentioned in this section.

Warning: If anybody knows how to make your default Windows editor git's default editor, please say so. I've read multiple articles on this topic and nothing worked for me.


Give special abilities to your system account


Get rid of invite codes

  • In WinSCP, go to /dw/ext/local/etc/, and double-click on config.pl. Find $USE_ACCT_CODES = 1; and change 1 to 0. Save your file.
  • In PuTTY, type this to make the changes go live on your Dreamhack: 
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/update-db.pl -r -p --innodb
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/update-db.pl -r --cluster=all --innodb
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/texttool.pl load


Customize PuTTY and Notepad++

See these articles for details: PuTTY, Notepad++.


Make sure things are up-to-date

Important: you can generally get explanations about any bash command using help COMMAND (e.g. help cd) and any git command using git COMMAND -h (e.g git pull -h).


Update your code

Code is committed by developers all the time. You must always update your repositories before you do anything else.

  • Use the pull command to fetch updates to each of the base branch: 
cd $LJHOME
git pull dreamwidth develop:develop
git pull dreamwidth master:master
  • Then use the push command to forward the changes on your GitHub fork: 
git push origin develop
git push origin master
N.B. When you do this you be will asked for your password on GitHub. Again, the cursor won't move as you type it. This is normal.
  • For the nonfree part of the code, the commands are exactly the same except the first one, as nonfree is in a different folder: 
cd $LJHOME/ext/dw-nonfree
  • You can also create a script to make this process simpler: see this article.
N.B. To create a new file on WinSCP, right click into the correct folder (/bin here) then click on New/File.


Update your database

  • We're already seen this once but here it is again: 
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/update-db.pl -r -p --innodb
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/update-db.pl -r --cluster=all --innodb
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/texttool.pl load
  • You can also create a script to make this process simpler: see this article.


Make changes to your local code

Find or file a bug

Some of these bugs won't appear to require 'minor' effort to you. It's normal. Try to find small bugs among them: minor modifications to be done on one of the site pages (text to be modified; elements to be added, removed or moved; elements to be hidden from some categories of users, etc.).
  • To assign a bug to yourself, enter your Bugzilla e-mail address in Assign To and set the status to IN_PROGRESS.
To make this easier, you can also use one of [info]fu's Greasemonkey scripts: Dreamwidth Bug Grabber. Click on (grab!) next to Assign To and this will edit it and Status for you. Click on Save Changes of course.


Create a local branch stemming from develop

  • Remember that your repository has two branches: master and develop. You always want to work in develop so make sure you're there first using the checkout command: 
git checkout develop
  • Now you can create a new branch specifically dedicated to the bug you want to work on using the branch command. 
git branch BRANCHNAME
N.B. It is best if you use the bug number and a short description as your branch name: bug####/short_description
  • To switch to this branch, use the checkout command again: 
git checkout BRANCHNAME
  • You can also create and switch to a branch at the same time using: 
git checkout -b BRANCHNAME
  • And that's it. Now you can start coding!


Work, work, work

  • Use WinSCP to open the file you need to edit, add new files or delete existing ones.
  • Remember that the free part of the code is in ~/dw/* while the non-free part is in ~/dw/ext/dw-nonfree/*.
  • If you're working on site pages, you're working on .bml files. These are in ~dw/htdocs/ or one of the subsequent folders. You'll see that their names correspond to the URLs of site pages. These files may use .pm modules/widgets which are in ~dw/cgi-bin/LJ/ or ~dw/cgi-bin/DW/.
  • For text strings which are not in ~dw/htdocs/xxx.bml.text files, see ~dw/bin/upgrading/en.dat.
  • For more specific searches, you can use the grep command: grep [option(s)] pattern [file(s)]

Interesting options:

-E: match using extended regular expressions

-F: match using fixed strings

-r: recursive

-i: case insensitive

-l: filename only

-n: add relative line number

Examples: 

grep -ri "find this text" * | more
This will search for "find this text" in all files and display it page by page. 
grep -ril "find this text" * | more
This will search for "find this text" in all files but only display the relevant filenames and not any excerpts. 
grep -rl print_entry $LJHOME/bin/upgrading/s2layers
This will search for files containing "print_entry" in the /s2layers folder, and only display the filenames as results.


Test your changes on your Dreamhack

  • In PuTTY, stop your Dreamhack: 
stop-apache
  • Update your database by typing this or dwdb: 
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/update-db.pl -r -p --innodb
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/update-db.pl -r --cluster=all --innodb
$LJHOME/bin/upgrading/texttool.pl load
  • Start your Dreamhack again: 
start-apache
  • Go to your Dreamhack and test. Edit the files again in WinSCP if more changes are needed. Go through these steps again to test your new changes.


Mark your local changes as ready to be committed

Before being committed, work is moved to a staging area. Think of it as the "Ready? Steady?" before the "Go!". At this point nothing is definite and you can easily change things.

  • First, make sure you've edited, added or removed every file you wanted by using the status command: 
git status
  • If things look good you can add your changes to the staging ('pre-commit') area using the add command: 
git add FILENAME
  • To add all files which have been updated at once you can use: 
git add -u
  • To add all files which have been added or updated at once use this instead: 
git add .

FIXME: really? need to do a little testing with deleted files

  • If you realize you need to do some more work, edit files again and use add again when you're done. It's that simple.

FIXME: what if I want to reset everything?


Commit your changes locally

  • If you think you're done with your work at this point you can commit your changes locally using the commit command: 
git commit -m "commit message"
In the commit message explain briefly what this commit does.
  • If you you need to do some more work later you can update your commit using --amend: 
git commit --amend -m "new commit message"
N.B. You can also do this if you need to edit your commit message.


Go from local to the World Wide Web

Push the changes to your github.com repository

You should only push your local changes to your develop branch on github.com once you're happy with your patch and won't go back to it again as it's harder to change things from this point on.

If you're sure use the push command and the branch name: 

git push origin BRANCHNAME


Request your changes to be pulled into the main code

On your GitHub page, click on the correct repository (dw-free or dw-nonfree), select the correct branch in the branch drop-down menu (below 'Clone in Windows') then click on Pull Request below.

In the pull request message, mention the bug number and bug title again, provide a link to the bug on Bugzilla, and explain what your patch does.

N.B. If there's a delay between the moment you pushed your branch and the moment it appears on GitHub, check its status page, wait and refresh. :)


Mention the pull request on Bugzilla

FIXME: is this necessary?

  • Comment on the bug with a link to your pull request.
  • Wait for someone to review and commit your patch. You're done. :)


More: deeper understanding of the workflow

If you want to understand the workflow better I suggest reading the 'workflow', 'add & commit" and 'pushing changes' sections of Git - The Simple Guide. It has very simple, clear explanations and a drawing, which helps too :).


More: checking things

  • To check which branch you're on (noted with an asterisk): 
git branch
  • To see the changes you've made on the branch you're on before you stage them for commit: 
git diff
  • To see all the changes you've made on the branch you're on before you commit them: 
git status -v
  • To see which files you've added, removed, modified on the branch you're on before you commit them and whether they're staged for commit: 
git status -s


More: stashing your changes

If you have work you haven't committed yet and you want to work on another bug or update your master and develop branches you need to stash your work first. It's generally good practice to do this every time you have work you haven't committed.

  • Make sure you're on the right branch using the checkout command.
  • Put away your work using the stash command: 
git stash
  • And bring it back with: 
git stash pop


More: working in stages

If you want to pace yourself or be easily able to go back to a certain point in your work you can do successive commits instead of one big final one.

To go back to a previous commit use the reset command:

FIXME: code missing


More: renaming and deleting branches

  • To delete a branch locally: 
git branch -d BRANCHNAME
  • To rename a branch locally: 
git branch -m OLDNAME NEWNAME
N.B. This will work even if you've committed and pushed some changes already. However, if you have, it will not rename the branch on your GitHub fork but create a new identical one. You will need to delete the branch on GitHub.
  • To delete a branch on your GitHub fork: 
git push origin --delete BRANCHNAME


More: troubleshooting tips

Issues with text strings

  • As [info]denise explained here, you need to delete old text strings and create new ones when you edit .text files or en.dat instead of simply editing the text. If the change isn't critical - the string doesn't need to be renamed or the text change is minor - it's better to notify the site copy team so that text can be changed locally and the original file left alone.
  • If text you've modified doesn't appear on the site after a code push, append ?uselang=debug to the page URL to make sure it's using the right string. If it is and it still doesn't display after a while, comment on [info]dw_maintenance.

Starting over

  • Delete your copies of the Dreamwidth repositories:

FIXME: write


References

Retrieved from "http://wiki.dreamwidth.net/wiki/index.php?title=Newbie_Guide_for_Windows_People_Working_on_Minor_Bugs&oldid=10874"