virt-manager/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contribute to virt-manager

Bug reporting

The preferred place for bug reports is bugzilla.redhat.com. This is documented more at https://virt-manager.org/bugs/

Small issues can be reported in the github issue tracker. Anything that's non-trivial, or is a feature request, should be filed in bugzilla.

Please only file issues if they apply to the latest version of virt-manager. If you are using an older version from a distro, please file a bug with them.

When filing a bug, please reproduce the issue with the --debug flag passed to the tool and attach the full output in the bug report.

Writing patches

The following commands will be useful for anyone writing patches:

./setup.py test      # Run local unit test suite
./setup.py pylint    # Run pylint/pycodestyle checking

Any patches shouldn't change the output of 'test' or 'pylint'. Depending on what version of libvirt or pylint is installed, you may see some pre-existing errors from these commands. The important thing is that any changes you make do not add additional errors.

The 'pylint' command requires pylint and pycodestyle to be installed. If codespell is installed, it will be invoked as well.

Patches to virtinst/ code should ideally not regress code coverage testing. Run ./setup.py test --coverage to see a coverage report before and after your contribution, and ensure no new lines show up. Maintainers can help you out if you aren't sure how to test your code.

One useful way to manually test virt-manager's UI is using libvirt's unit test driver. From the source directory, Launch virt-manager like:

./virt-manager --connect test://$PWD/tests/testdriver.xml

This testdriver has many fake XML definitions that can be used to see each bit of virt-manager's UI. It also enables testing the various wizards without having to alter your host virt config.

The command line tools can be tested similarly. To run a virt-install command that won't alter your host config, you can do:

./virt-install --connect test:///default --debug ...

--connect test:///default here is libvirt's built in unit test driver.

We use glade-3 for building most of virt-manager's UI. See the files in the ui/ directory.

Submitting patches

The virt-manager git repo is hosted on github. Small patches are acceptable via github pull-request, but anything non-trivial should be sent to the virt-tools-list mailing list.

Sending patches using git send-email is preferred, but git format-patch output attached to an email is also fine.

UI design

If you are planning to add a feature to virt-manager's UI, please read DESIGN.md first. Features that do not fit the goals specified in that document may be rejected. If you are unsure if your feature is a good fit for virt-manager, please ask on the mailing list before you start coding!

Introductory tasks

Extending the virt-install or virt-xml command line is a good introductory task for virt-manager. See the wiki for both a patch tutorial, and a list of libvirt <domain> XML options that still need to be added to our command line.

Translations

Translations are handled at fedora.zanata.org. Please register for a Fedora account and request access to a translation team, as described at Translate on Zanata, and contribute at virt-manager at Zanata.

Advanced testing

There's a few standalone specialty tests:

./setup.py test_ui              # dogtail UI test suite. This takes over your desktop
./setup.py test_urls            # Test fetching media from live distro URLs
./setup.py test_initrd_inject   # Test live virt-install --initrd-inject

All test 'test*' commands have a --debug option if you are hitting problems. For more options, see ./setup.py test --help.