CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing guidelines

Here are a couple things to take into account when contributing to swizzin.

There is a large amount of further documentation and guidance available in our docs https://swizzin.ltd/dev/. You are expected to familiarise yourself with the documentation and the code.

In case anything is not clear, we're always happy to explain and teach why/how these things are done; feel free to come talk to us in our Discord.

Merging against the develop branch

As we use the git flow, please make sure to make your PRs from the develop branch, and target the develop branch for the PRs.

Changes will make it to the master in releases.

Requirements for consideration

We expect the following criteria from a PR. You're more than welcome to ask us how to achieve any of these that you are not familiar with, and we'll be happy to help.

• A completed checklist
• No shellcheck/shfmt errors or warnings.
• A proof of the changes being tested

You are welcome to submit PRs that do not fit this spec, but they are required to be marked as Draft PRs and preferrably pre-pended with WIP: at the beginning of the PR title. If that is the case, please mention what your outstanding TODOs for the PR are.

Editor plugins and tooling

Please note that Extensions for VSCode should pop up as "recommended extensions", so just open it up and install them in one click!

Required

Please make sure that you have the following plugins and tools installed and working correctly.

• shellcheck VSCode Plugin and Binary (version 0.7.1 or higher)
  • If you are not using VS Code with the plugin above, please make sure to catch anything that shellcheck does not like.
  • Wherever you deem appropriate, add #shellcheck disable=... inline to suppress the warnings.
• shell-format VSCode Plugin (auto-installs binary) and Binary
  • If you are not using VS Code with the plugin above, please make sure to apply formatting with the flags mentioned in settings.json

Suggested

These are just some super useful ones we really like that you should give a shot

• shellman VSCode Plugin
  • It's just a collection of super useful snippets
• Bash IDE VSCode Plugin
  • Offers a lot of the Intellisense features that make VSCode worth using

Directories and files

• Please use /opt to install any new software. Avoid using home directories to install application binaries/source
• When creating configuration for users, please add it to an appropriate folder under ~/.config/ when possible
• Please make sure to put any necessary code output into the default log files for swizzin, (i.e. swizzin.log and install.log under /root/logs) including the stderr
• Make sure to create .lock files for your application under /install/
  • Record any application information that might need to be dynamically retrieved into the .lock file above.

Bash code styleguide

Formatting

We are a 4-space gang. Please make sure to run your code through shfmt with the right flags specified. Check the first chapter here.

Shellcheck

Please use shellcheck and its IDE plugins and resolve any warnings for the code you have contributed.

Code re-use

Please familiarise yourself with the functions available under sources/functions as they handle a large amount of steps you might need to do manually.

A list of the files that are included on a box or a setup.sh by default are in sources/globals.sh

Whenever you are contributing code that might be generalized and useful for other applications, please add the functions to this location. When doing so, please give a quick comment into the file on what the purpose and possible return output is. e.g:

# Retrieves all users that are managed by swizzin
# Returns usernames separated by newline

Snippets

We have made a couple snippet definitions in the .vscode folder that should be getting loaded into your project whenever you open the workspace.

These should cover most of the functions included in globals.sh, but feel free to add yours if you have any suggestions

Return codes

Please use exit 1 or return 1 when handling exiting due to some run-time errors

Codename-based logic

When making logic based on distribution codenames, please structure it in such a way that introduces as little need for maintenance in the future as possible.

A practical example for this is handling packages that are no longer packaged for newer LTS releases. In such scenarios, please make it so that the "default" behaviour is for newer LTS releases, and the older LTS releases are treated as the outliers. e.g.:

if [[ $codename =~ ("buster"|"stretch") ]]; then
  mcrypt=php-mcrypt
else
  mcrypt=
fi

# Apt install line which has $mcrypt in the package list

In this example, the default (else) behaviour triggers for current releases, and only the old ones have the modified behaviour

Handling interactivity

Please make sure your scripts are compatible with the custom/unattended installation options through environment variables. This means that there should be a scenario in your script, where no interaction is necessary if necessary variables are available before the script started.

Please stick to the following:

• Pre-fix your variables with the name of the application to prevent collisions, e.g. $APPLICATION_VARIABLE
• Ensure your script is checking the existance of the variable before triggering anything interactive, so that the scripts can skip over things if they are supplied through options.
  • e.g. if [[ -z $APPLICATION_VARIABLE ]]; then read $APPLICATION_VARIABLE; fi
  • e.g. while [[ -z $APPLICATION_VARIABLE ]]; do [...] APPLICATION_VARIABLE=$verified-value [...] ; done
• Appropriately document the varaibles in the docs repo

APT handling

We have developed our own internal set of functions for handling apt packages in a predictable and uniform way. In the event any of these functions encounter an error, they will (with default behaviour) ensure the rest of the script will not continue. Please use the following functions and see the available options. Refrain from calling the raw apt equivalents of the functions below.

Functions

• Exported and box-wide available functions. By default, the functions perform apt-get updates for you if the database is too old (more than 1h), runs sanity checks before installs, and checks logs for errors so the script is killed in case something went wrong. These can all be overrode with the options below.
  • apt_install [options] $1, $2, $3 ... [options]
  • apt_remove [options] $1, $2, $3 ... [options]
  • apt_autoremove
  • apt_upgrade [options]
  • apt_update [options]
• Non-exported functions which need a source or a . .../apt. Please consult the sources/functions/apt file to see what they do and how they work.
  • get_candidate_version
  • _get_apt_last_log
  • check_installed
  • ... and a couple others

FYI the default behaviour in most of the functions is to not issue apt update in case the last update was within an hour with the exception of apt_update, which will always perform an update. It is therefore fine to issue an apt_update and an apt_install, as the update will only run once.

Options

The following options can be used with any of the exported functions above to override their default behaviour.

• --interactive
  • Run the installation stdout in the forefront and allow any end-user interaction if necessary
  • WARNING: This is not yet fully tested
• --skip-check
  • Skips integrity checks during the command such as dpkg lock checking, apt --simulate, and a couple others.
• --ignore-errors
  • Allows script to continue in case an error was encountered, instead of killing the job script by default
• --purge
  • Only for apt_remove: performs the removal with the --purge flag sent to the apt-get remove command.
• --recommends
  • Only for apt_install: performs the installation with the --install-recommends flag sent to the apt-get install command.

Printing into the terminal

Please use the functions exported from sources/functions/color_echo that are available whenever something is ran from the context of either box or setup.sh.

Formatting prints

• Instead of making a sequence of the same exact echo calls to make new line separation, please use the \n, or make your quoted text span multiple lines (with no pre-pending white spaces) instead. THe output will be nicely indented. as a result.
• In general, there should be no un-styled prints thrown at the end-user.

Logging

• The echo_... calls mentioned below will automatically make a copy of the messages.
• Please make sure that your $log variable is only used to refer to the path of the log (imported from either setup.sh or box)
• Any application return/verbose(-ish) print should go into the log file
  • Please make sure your apt calls are not -q/--quiet when forwarding to the log file, for example

Available functions and uses

The file mentioned above has a function embedded to show a couple examples of how will the resulting echo look like, please consult these in your own terminal by running the following code below. Smaller test units are available for echo_test_wrap, echo_test_log and echo_test_basic

. /etc/swizzin/sources/functions/color_echo
echo_tests

There is a wide choice of "styles" to choose from, please use them appropriately. Here is a small guide on their use

• Ensure you are correctly outputting to the log
• Make sure the echo_... calls are on the "inside of the function", not outside and around it.
  • TODO Clarify what his means
• echo_success is meant to be the final echo printed in the event an installation was successful.
• echo_error is meant to be the final echo printed in the event something irrecoverable happens, or an abortion is encountered.
• echo_warn is meant to alert the user to some of the following examples:
  • Something irrecoverable is about to happen
  • A user-recoverable error has been encountered
  • Basic problems with
• echo_info is meant to highlight to user some important information such as the following examples:
  • ports that have been chosen
  • Important generated values that should be recorded
  • necessary follow up steps
  • pointers to documentation, etc
• echo_query is meant to highlight the fact user interaction is required
• echo_progress_start and echo_progress_done are meant to be used to "wrap" a chunk of code that can take a while to complete. If it takes more than 0.1s, you should probably wrap it in this. Examples could be:
  • Doing apt calls like install, update, upgrade, etc.
  • Generating ciphers/keys
  • Git pulls/clones
  • Downloads of larger files
  • Recursive chowns/chmods on large directories
• echo_log_only is meant to store input directly into the logfile, and bypass the end user terminal entirely. Please log anything of note that could help troubleshoot anything when a user has problems, such as the following:
  • Any generated unique values that need to match some specification (e.g. ports)
  • Any variables that are getting assigned from either the user or from the return of a command/function

Logging

As mentioned above, please ensure any relevant information/print that is generated during the script is corretly forwarded to the destination of the $log file.

If necessary, please append the $log forward with 2>&1 to redirect all stderr to stdout, and therefore into the log as well. If you expect these possibilities to happen, please make sure to catch this within your script and error out too, you know.

Python applications

As a principle, please avoid installing Python2 applications.

Due to how Python is being versioned, please see the python functions available in sources/function/python.

Please use virtual environments only for applications that require a specific or an outdated version of Python.

Service files

Please include service files for application management. Use the %i feature for multi-user applications, avoid for single-instance applications.

User management

Whenever possible, please describe how is user management done within your application, and how you have adjusted box to handle this.

Documentation

For new applications, please make sure to make the necessary documentation pages on the Swizzin Docs repo. It's nice and convenient when you include the link to the Documentation repo PR in the PR here.