Developing For Docsweeper#

This document contains instructions about how to obtain a functioning development environment of Docsweeper, and how new additions to the code base can be tested.

Docsweeper uses Poetry for dependency management and tox for automation testing and linting.

Installing The Package#

Clone the Docsweeper Github repository, and install the project environment by running the following command in the repository root:

$ git checkout https://github.com/thueringa/docsweeper.git
$ cd docsweeper
$ poetry install

Running The Test Suite#

There is a test suite that tests the correct behavior of Docsweeper using all installed supported version control systems with different test repositories. Tests can also be run with an additional supplied git or hg executable, for example to test behavior of Docsweeper with old versions.

Test Configuration#

To run the tests successfully, you may need to adjust the paths of your version control executables. You can do so in a section named docsweeper in the file pytest.ini, located in the repository root. Supported options are:

[docsweeper] :

Configuration section for Docsweeper.

git_executablestring: location of git executable on your system.
hg_executablestring: Location of Mercurial executable on your system.
old_git_executablestring: Location of an alternative git executable for tests with older versions. This setting is ignored if tests are run with the --no-old-git parameter.
old_hg_executablestring: Location of an alternative Mercurial executable for tests with older versions. This setting is ignored if tests are run with the --no-old-hg parameter.

For example, put the following snippet in your pytest.ini to change the git executable to /usr/sbin/git:

[docsweeper]
git_executable = /usr/sbin/git

Running The Tests#

Having properly configured your executable paths, you should be able to run the tests by invoking pytest through poetry using the previously installed environment. Run the following command in the repository root:

$ poetry run pytest

You can also test Docsweeper on a specific Python version by using one of the test environments provided in tox.ini. For example, to run the test suite with Python 3.9, invoke:

$ poetry run tox -e py39-test

Currently supported Python environments are py37, py38, py39, and py310. Refer to the file tox.ini in the repository root directory for all available test and linter environments.

Available Test Suites#

Specific tests can be added or omitted from the test suite by passing any combination of the following parameters to a test run:

--no-old-git: Do not run tests that use the old git version.
--no-old-hg: Do not run tests that use the old Mercurial version.

For example, invoke the following command to omit the old git version tests:

$ poetry run pytest --no-old-git

Running The Pre-Commit Script#

A comprehensive pre-commit script is provided in tox.ini. It performs style and type checking, as well as running the test suite on all supported Python environments. Run it by calling

$ poetry run tox -e pre-commit

Running The Profiling Suite#

Docsweeper provides a simple cProfile test suite. From the repository root, run the profiler test module in the src/tests directory:

$ poetry run python -m tests.profiler

Upon execution, the module prints an overview of the most resource-intensive functions of Docsweeper. To perform a manual review of the profiler statistics, run the command with an additional -i flag and inspect the stats variable, which is an instance of pstats.Stats.

Creating Documentation#

To let Sphinx* create HTML documentation in docs/html, invoke poetry run tox -e docs. It is recommended to use Sphinx v4.5.0 to create the docs, which is only installed for enviroments with Python >= v3.10. Above-mentioned command will choose the correct Python version automatically, if there is one in PATH.

Commit Checklist#

Before merging code into master, verify the following conditions:

If any new code has been introduced: is it documented in source code? If it is public, is it properly documented in the sphinx documentation?
Does the command poetry run tox -e pre-commit return successfully? If not, fix the issues. Run poetry run tox -e fix-style for fixing style issues automatically where possible.
Has changelog.md been updated? Add the changes to the development version on top of the document and change the version number accordingly.
Bump the version number in pyproject.toml if necessary.