InvenTree/CONTRIBUTING.md

Please read the contribution guidelines below, before submitting your first pull request to the InvenTree codebase.

Branches and Versioning

InvenTree roughly follow the GitLab flow branching style, to allow simple management of multiple tagged releases, short-lived branches, and development on the main branch.

Version Numbering

InvenTree version numbering follows the semantic versioning specification.

Master Branch

The HEAD of the "main" or "master" branch of InvenTree represents the current "latest" state of code development.

• All feature branches are merged into master
• All bug fixes are merged into master

No pushing to master: New featues must be submitted as a pull request from a separate branch (one branch per feature).

Feature Branches

Feature branches should be branched from the master branch.

• One major feature per branch / pull request
• Feature pull requests are merged back into the master branch
• Features may also be merged into a release candidate branch

Stable Branch

The HEAD of the "stable" branch represents the latest stable release code.

• Versioned releases are merged into the "stable" branch
• Bug fix branches are made from the "stable" branch

Release Candidate Branches

• Release candidate branches are made from master, and merged into stable.
• RC branches are targetted at a major/minor version e.g. "0.5"
• When a release candidate branch is merged into stable, the release is tagged

Bugfix Branches

• If a bug is discovered in a tagged release version of InvenTree, a "bugfix" or "hotfix" branch should be made from that tagged release
• When approved, the branch is merged back into stable, with an incremented PATCH number (e.g. 0.4.1 -> 0.4.2)
• The bugfix must also be cherry picked into the master branch.

Environment

Target version

We are currently targeting:

Name	Minimum version
Python	3.9
Django	3.2

Auto creating updates

The following tools can be used to auto-upgrade syntax that was depreciated in new versions:

pip install pyupgrade
pip install django-upgrade

To update the codebase run the following script.

pyupgrade `find . -name "*.py"`
django-upgrade --target-version 3.2 `find . -name "*.py"`

Credits

If you add any new dependencies / libraries, they need to be added to the docs. Please try to do that as timely as possible.

Migration Files

Any required migration files must be included in the commit, or the pull-request will be rejected. If you change the underlying database schema, make sure you run invoke migrate and commit the migration files before submitting the PR.

Note: A github action checks for unstaged migration files and will reject the PR if it finds any!

Unit Testing

Any new code should be covered by unit tests - a submitted PR may not be accepted if the code coverage for any new features is insufficient, or the overall code coverage is decreased.

The InvenTree code base makes use of GitHub actions to run a suite of automated tests against the code base every time a new pull request is received. These actions include (but are not limited to):

• Checking Python and Javascript code against standard style guides
• Running unit test suite
• Automated building and pushing of docker images
• Generating translation files

The various github actions can be found in the ./github/workflows directory

Code Style

Sumbitted Python code is automatically checked against PEP style guidelines. Locally you can run invoke style to ensure the style checks will pass, before submitting the PR.

Documentation

New features or updates to existing features should be accompanied by user documentation. A PR with associated documentation should link to the matching PR at https://github.com/inventree/inventree-docs/

Translations

Any user-facing strings must be passed through the translation engine.

• InvenTree code is written in English
• User translatable strings are provided in English as the primary language
• Secondary language translations are provided via Crowdin

Note: Translation files are updated via GitHub actions - you do not need to compile translations files before submitting a pull request!

Python Code

For strings exposed via Python code, use the following format:

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

user_facing_string = _('This string will be exposed to the translation engine!')

Templated Strings

HTML and javascript files are passed through the django templating engine. Translatable strings are implemented as follows:

{% load i18n %}

<span>{% trans "This string will be translated" %} - this string will not!</span>