Subject: Re: Alpine Linux aports codestyle
To: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
Cc: alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
References: <1c2e99a3-4995-296d-b6e1-6fbad8261ab8@schinagl.nl>
 <20190723212959.316ab849@ncopa-desktop.copa.dup.pw>
From: Olliver Schinagl <oliver+list@schinagl.nl>
Message-ID: <ef30c218-fe9d-d46f-9907-575c7978fbd5@schinagl.nl>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 09:13:39 +0200
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Hey Nathanael,

On 23-07-2019 21:29, Natanael Copa wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2019 08:28:11 +0200
> Olliver Schinagl <oliver+list@schinagl.nl> wrote:
> 
>> Hey list,
>>
>> over the past year or so, I've started to contribute to Alpine Linux's
>> aports, and have met various codestyles. To get to the bottom of what is
>> 'the' Alpine Linux codestyle, I came up empty handed, there is no
>> CODESTYLE.md, no search query that finds anything nor on the wiki.
>>
>> Now of course, the document could be hiding out of plain site, and if
>> that is the case, other then saying 'make it findable', I appologize for
>> even bringing anything up here.
> 
>> As I was about to do a version bump to community/mtd-utils, I noticed
>> a lot of activity on the package, a great thing!. Sadly I came to the
>> realization, that in the 'default' aports workflow, the
>> maintainers/contributers do not get CC-ed on changes. As I'm mostly
>> only familiar with Linux, U-Boot and busybox development, I missed
>> the 'get_maintainers' step, where people involved in abuild's would
>> be kept in the loop.
> 
> This can and be improved.
Excellent, what did you have in mind? I suspsect a CONTRIBUTING.md would 
fix this.

* Read codestyle
* always include maintainers in the CC/invite to review.

For linux (and u-boot) the get_maintainers script goes over the git log 
of a APKBUILD and gets the contributers.

Actually, this can be easily automated.
Codestyle -> linting via the CI.
maintainers can also be found using the CI (parse the APKBUILD file, 
include maintainer via the gitlab API

Getting the auther authors/contributers from the log however can cause 
quite some false positives, e.g. if someone goes over the entire 
repository and fixes some global issue (removes all cd $builddir 
statements) he now gets flagged for each MR.

> 
>> Never the less, what triggered for me to address the mailing list
>> however was commit 57d39405ad74 ("community/mtd-utils: adhere to
>> aports code style"). As the subject already states, 'adhere to aports
>> code style' is mentioned, but as mentioned earlier, I cannot seem to
>> find this aforementioned code style. It should be obvious then of
>> course, that when asking people to adhere to a coding style, this
>> style needed to be documented (and more importantantly rationalized).
>> It shouldn't needed to be mentioned, by having a guide (that can be
>> checked with linters/checkers) makes life easier, for both developers
>> and reviewers (passes automated code checks, no need to argue about
>> style anymore).
>>
>> So in short, where is the style guide that everybody keeps talking
>> about :)
> 
> Its still unwritten, sorry. I guess its based on what is common for the
> majority of the APKBUILDs. It is ofcourse not realistic that everyone
> read all of the thousands of APKBUILDs to get how things are normally
> done, so yeah, this should be fixed.
> 
> I created an issue: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/issues/10689
Created a MR to kick off the ball.

> 
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Olliver
>