Development

All VyOS source code is hosted on GitHub under the VyOS organization which can be found here: https://github.com/vyos

Our code is split into several modules. VyOS is composed of multiple individual packages, some of them are forks of upstream packages and are periodically synced with upstream, so keeping the whole source under a single repository would be very inconvenient and slow. There is now an ongoing effort to consolidate all VyOS-specific framework/config packages into vyos-1x package, but the basic structure is going to stay the same, just with fewer and fewer packages while the base code is rewritten from Perl/BASH into Python using and XML based interface definition for the CLI.

The repository that contains all the ISO build scripts is: https://github.com/vyos/vyos-build

The README.md file will guide you to use the this top level repository.

Submit a patch

Patches are always more then welcome. To have a clean and easy to maintain repository we have some guidelines when working with Git. A clean repository eases the automatic generation of a changelog file.

A good approach for writing commit messages is actually to have a look at the file(s) history by invoking git log path/to/file.txt.

Preparding patch/commit

In a big system, such as VyOS, that is comprised of multiple components, it’s impossible to keep track of all the changes and bugs/feature requests in one’s head. We use a bugtracker known as Phabricator for it (“issue tracker” would be a better term, but this one stuck).

The information is used in two ways:

  • Keep track of the progress (what we’ve already done in this branch and what we still need to do).

  • Prepare release notes for upcoming releases

To make this approach work, every change must be associated with a bug number (prefixed with T) and a component. If there is no bug report/feature request for the changes you are going to make, you have to create a Phabricator task first. Once there is an entry in Phabricator, you should reference its id in your commit message, as shown below:

  • ddclient: T1030: auto create runtime directories

  • Jenkins: add current Git commit ID to build description

If there is no Phabricator reference in the commits of your pull request, we have to ask you to ammend the commit message. Otherwise we will have to reject it.

In general, use an editor to create your commit messages rather than passing them on the command line. The format should be and is inspired by this blog post: http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html

  • A single, short, summary of the commit (recommended 70 characters or less, but not exceeding 80 characters)

    • Add a prefix of the changed component to your commit headline, e.g. snmp: T1111: or ethernet: T2222:. If multiple components are touched by this commit, you can use multiple prefixes, e.g.: snmp: ethernet:

  • Followed by a blank line (this is mandatory - else Git will treat the whole commit message as the headline only)

  • Followed by a message which describes all the details like:

    • What/why/how something has been changed, makes everyones life easier when working with git bisect

    • All text of the commit message should be wrapped at 72 characters if possible which makes reading commit logs easier with git log on a standard terminal (which happens to be 80x25)

    • If applicable a reference to a previous commit should be made linking those commits nicely when browsing the history: After commit abcd12ef ("snmp: this is a headline") a Python import statement is missing, throwing the following exception: ABCDEF

  • Always use the -x option to the git cherry-pick command when back or forward porting an individual commit. This automatically appends the line: (cherry picked from commit <ID>) to the original authors commit message making it easier when bisecting problems.

  • Every change set must be consistent (self containing)! Do not fix multiple bugs in a single commit. If you already worked on multiple fixes in the same file use git add –patch to only add the parts related to the one issue into your upcoming commit.

Limits:

  • We only accept bugfixes in packages other than https://github.com/vyos/vyos-1x as no new functionality should use the old style templates (node.def and Perl/BASH code. Use the new stlye XML/Python interface instead.

Please submit your patches using the well-known GitHub pull-request against our repositories found in the VyOS GitHub organisation at https://github.com/vyos

Determining package for a fix

Suppose you want to make a change in the webproxy script but yet you do not know which of the many VyOS packages ship this file. You can determine the VyOS package name in question by using Debians dpkg -S command of your running VyOS installation.

vyos@vyos:~ dpkg -S /opt/vyatta/sbin/vyatta-update-webproxy.pl
vyatta-webproxy: /opt/vyatta/sbin/vyatta-update-webproxy.pl

This means the file in question (/opt/vyatta/sbin/vyatta-update-webproxy.pl) is located in the vyatta-webproxy package which can be found here: https://github.com/vyos/vyatta-webproxy

Fork repository to submit a Patch

Forking the repository and submitting a GitHub pull-request is the preferred way of submitting your changes to VyOS. You can fork any VyOS repository to your very own GitHub account by just appending /fork to any repositories URL on GitHub. To e.g. fork the vyos-1x repository, open the following URL in your favourite browser: https://github.com/vyos/vyos-1x/fork

You then can proceed with cloning your fork or add a new remote to your local repository:

  • Clone: git clone https://github.com/<user>/vyos-1x.git

  • Fork: git remote add myfork https://github.com/<user>/vyos-1x.git

In order to record you as the author of the fix please indentify yourself to Git by setting up your name and email. This can be done local for this one and only repository git config or globally using git config --global.

git config --global user.name "J. Random Hacker"
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

Make your changes and save them. Do the following for all changes files to record them in your created Git commit:

  • Add file to Git index using git add myfile, or for a whole directory: git add somedir/*

  • Commit the changes by calling git commit. Please use a meaningful commit headline (read above) and don’t forget to reference the Phabricator ID.

  • Submit the patch git push and create the GitHub pull-request.

Attach patch to Phabricator task

Follow the above steps on how to “Fork repository to submit a Patch”. Instead of uploading “pushing” your changes to GitHub you can export the patches/ commits and send it to maintainers@vyos.net or attach it directly to the bug (preferred over email)

  • Export last commit to patch file: git format-patch or export the last two commits into its appropriate patch files: git format-patch -2