nextcloud-android/CONTRIBUTING.md

Nextcloud Android app

Index

1. Guidelines
   1. Issue reporting
   2. Labels
      1. Pull request (PR)
      2. Issue
      3. Bug workflow
2. Contributing to Source Code
   1. Developing process
      1. Branching model
      2. Android Studio formatter setup
      3. Build variants
   2. Contribution process
      1. Fork and download android/master repository
      2. Create pull request
      3. Create another pull request
      4. Backport pull request
      5. Pull requests that also need changes on library
      6. Adding new files
   3. File naming
      1. Menu files
   4. Translations
3. Releases
   1. Types
      1. Stable
      2. Release Candidate
      3. Dev
   2. Version Name and number
      1. Stable / Release candidate
      2. Dev
   3. Release cycle
   4. Release Process
      1. Stable Release
      2. Release Candidate Release
      3. Development Dev

Guidelines

Issue reporting

• Report the issue and choose bug report or feature request. The template includes all the information we need to track down the issue.
• This repository is only for issues within the Nextcloud Android app code. Issues in other components should be reported in their own repositories, e.g. Nextcloud core
• Search the existing issues first, it's likely that your issue was already reported. If your issue appears to be a bug, and hasn't been reported, open a new issue.

Labels

Pull request

• 1 developing
• 2 to review
• 3 to release

Issue

• nothing
• approved
• PR exists (and then the PR# should be shown in first post)

Bug workflow

• approved: at least one other is able to reproduce it
• needs info: something unclear, or not able to reproduce
  • if no response within 1 months, bug will be closed
• pr exists: if bug is fixed, link to pr

Contributing to Source Code

Thanks for wanting to contribute source code to Nextcloud. That's great!

New contributions are added under AGPL version 3.

Developing process

We are all about quality while not sacrificing speed so we use a very pragmatic workflow.

• create an issue with feature request
  • discuss it with other developers
  • create mockup if necessary
  • must be approved --> label approved
  • after that no conceptual changes!
• develop code
• create pull request
• to assure the quality of the app, any PR gets reviewed, approved and tested by two developers before it will be merged to master

Branching model

• All contributions bug fix or feature PRs target the master branch
• Feature releases will always be based on master
• Bug fix releases will always be based on their respective feature-release-bug-fix-branches
• Bug fixes relevant for the most recent and released feature (e.g. 2.0.0) or bugfix (e.g. 2.0.1) release will be backported to the respective bugfix branch (e.g. 2.0.x or 2.1.x)
• Hot fixes not relevant for an upcoming feature release but the latest release can target the bug fix branch directly

Android Studio formatter setup

Our formatter setup is rather simple:

• Standard Android Studio
• Line length 120 characters (Settings->Editor->Code Style->Right margin(columns): 120)
• Auto optimize imports (Settings->Editor->Auto Import->Optimize imports on the fly)

Build variants

There are three build variants

• generic: no Google Stuff, used for FDroid
• gplay: with Google Stuff (Push notification), used for Google Play Store
• versionDev: based on master and library master, available as direct download and FDroid

Contribution process

• Contribute your code in the branch 'master'. It will give us a better chance to test your code before merging it with stable code.
• For your first contribution start a pull request on master.

1. Fork and download android/master repository:

• Please follow SETUP.md to setup Nextcloud Android app work environment.

2. Create pull request:

• Commit your changes locally: git commit -a
• Push your changes to your GitHub repo: git push
• Browse to https://github.com/YOURGITHUBNAME/android/pulls and issue pull request
• Enter description and send pull request.

3. Create another pull request:

To make sure your new pull request does not contain commits which are already contained in previous PRs, create a new branch which is a clone of upstream/master.

• git fetch upstream
• git checkout -b my_new_master_branch upstream/master
• If you want to rename that branch later: git checkout -b my_new_master_branch_with_new_name
• Push branch to server: git push -u origin name_of_local_master_branch
• Use GitHub to issue PR

4. Backport pull request:

Use backport-bot via "/backport to stable-version", e.g. "/backport to stable-3.7". This will automatically add "backport-request" label to PR and bot will create a new PR to targeted branch once the base PR is merged. If automatic backport fails, it will create a comment.

5. Pull requests that also need changes on library

For speeding up developing, we do use a master snapshot of nextcloud-library, provided by jitpack.io. This means that if a breaking change is merged on library, master branch of the app will fail. To limit this risk please follow this approach:

• on app PR: first use a reference to your library branch in build.gradle: ext -> androidLibraryVersion, e.g. androidLibraryVersion = "changeSearch-SNAPSHOT"
• on library PR: use label "client change required" to indicate that this is breaking change. This will prevent GitHub from merging it.

Once both PRs are reviewed and ready to merge:

• on library PR: remove label and merge it (for a short time now master cannot be built!)
• on app PR: change androidLibraryVersion back to "master-SNAPSHOT"
• wait for CI and then merge

With this approach the "downtime" of not building master is limited to the timestamp between merge lib PR and merging app PR, which is only limited by CI.

6. Adding new files

If you create a new file it needs to contain a license header. We encourage you to use the same license (AGPL3+) as we do. Copyright of Nextcloud GmbH is optional.

Source code of library:

 /* Nextcloud Android Library is available under MIT license
 *
 *   @author Your Name
 *   Copyright (C) 2019 Your Name
 *   Copyright (C) 2019 Nextcloud GmbH
 *   
 *   Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 *   of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
 *   in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
 *   to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
 *   copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 *   furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *   
 *   The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 *   all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 *   
 *   THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, 
 *   EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
 *   MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND 
 *   NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 
 *   BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN 
 *   ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN 
 *   CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
 *   THE SOFTWARE.
 *
 */

Source code of app:

/*
 * Nextcloud Android client application
 *
 * @author Your Name
 * Copyright (C) 2019 Your Name
 * Copyright (C) 2019 Nextcloud GmbH
 *
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

XML (layout) file:

<!--
 Nextcloud Android client application

 @author Your Name
 Copyright (C) 2019 Your Name
 Copyright (C) 2019 Nextcloud GmbH

 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 (at your option) any later version.

 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
 along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
-->

File naming

The file naming patterns are inspired and based on Ribot's Android Project And Code Guidelines.

Menu files

Similar to layout files, menu files should match the name of the component. For example, if we are defining a menu file that is going to be used in the UserProfileActivity, then the name of the file should be activity_user_profile.xml. Same pattern applies for menus used in adapter view items, dialogs, etc.

Component	Class Name	Menu Name
Activity	UserProfileActivity	activity_user_profile.xml
Fragment	SignUpFragment	fragment_sign_up.xml
Dialog	ChangePasswordDialog	dialog_change_password.xml
AdapterView item	---	item_person.xml
Partial layout	---	partial_stats_bar.xml

A good practice is to not include the word menu as part of the name because these files are already located in the menu directory. In case a component uses several menus in different places (via popup menus) then the resource name would be extended. For example, if the user profile activity has two popup menus for configuring the users settings and one for the handling group assignments then the file names for the menus would be: activity_user_profile_user_settings.xml and activity_user_profile_group_assignments.xml.

Translations

We manage translations via Transifex. So just request joining the translation team for Android on the site and start translating. All translations will then be automatically pushed to this repository, there is no need for any pull request for translations.

If you need to change a translation, do not change it, but give it new key. This way the translation stays backward compatible as we automatically backport translated strings to last versions.

When submitting PRs with changed translations, please only submit changes to values/strings.xml and not changes to translated files. These will be overwritten by next merge of transifex-but and increase PR review.

Releases

At the moment we are releasing the app in two app stores:

• Google Play Store
• f-droid

Types

We do differentiate between three different kinds of releases:

Stable

Play store and f-droid releases for the masses. Pull Requests that have been tested and reviewed can go to master. After the last release candidate is out in the wild for ~2 weeks and no errors get reported (by users or in the developer console) the master branch is ready for the stable release. So when we decide to go for a new release we freeze the master feature wise.

Release Candidate

stable beta releases done via the Beta program of the Google Play store and f-droid. Whenever a PR is reviewed/approved we put it on master. Before releasing a new stable version there is at least one release candidate. It is based on the current master and during this phase the master is feature freezed. After ~2 weeks with no error a stable version will be released, which is identical to the latest release candidate.

Dev

Done as a standalone app that can be installed in parallel to the stable app. Any PR which is labelled "ready for dev" will be automatically included in the dev app. This label should only set by the main developers. Same applies for the android-library. This repository also has a branch called dev which includes all upcoming features. The dev branch on this repository must always use the android-library dev branch.

Version Name and number

Stable / Release candidate

For stable and release candidate the version name follows the semantic versioning schema and the version number has several digits reserved to parts of the versioning schema inspired by the jayway version numbering, where:

• 2 digits for beta code as in release candidates starting at '01'
• 2 digits for hot fix code
• 3 digits for minor version code
• n digits for mayor version code

Examples for different versions:

• 1.0.0 10000099
• 8.12.2 80120200
• 9.8.4-rc18 90080418

beware, that beta releases for an upcoming version will always use the minor and hotfix version of the release they are targeting. So to make sure the version code of the upcoming stable release will always be higher stable releases set the 2 beta digits to '99' as seen above in the examples.

Dev

For dev the version name is in format YYYYMMDD. It is mainly as a reference for reporting bugs and is not related to stable/release candidates as it is an independent app.

Release cycle

• Releases are planned every ~2 months, with 6 weeks of developing and 2 weeks of stabilising
• after feature freeze a public release candidate on play store and f-droid is released
• ~2 weeks testing, bug fixing
• release final version on f-droid and play store
• Bugfix releases (dot releases, e.g. 3.2.1) are released 4 weeks after stable version from the branch created with first stable release (stable-3.2.x). If changes to the library are required, we do the same: create a branch from the version used in stable release (e.g. 1.1.0) and then release a dot release (1.1.1).

Hotfixes as well as security fixes are released via bugfix releases (dot releases) but are released on demand in contrast to regular, scheduled bugfix releases.

To get an idea which PRs and issues will be part of the next release simply check our milestone plan

Release process

Stable Release

Stable releases are based on the git master.

1. Bump the version name and version code in the AndroidManifest.xml, see chapter 'Version Name and number'.
2. Create a release/tag in git. Tag name following the naming schema: stable-Mayor.Minor.Hotfix (e.g. stable-1.2.0) naming the version number following the semantic versioning schema

Release Candidate Release

Release Candidate releases are based on the git master and are done between stable releases.

1. Bump the version name and version code in the AndroidManifest.xml, see below the version name and code concept.
2. Create a release/tag in git. Tag name following the naming schema: rc-Mayor.Minor.Hotfix-betaIncrement (e.g. rc-1.2.0-12) naming the version number following the semantic versioning schema

Developement Release

Dev releases are based on the master branch and are done independently from stable releases for people willing to test new features and provide valuable feedback on new features to be incorporated before a feature gets released in the stable app.

The deployment/build is done once a day automatically. If code has changed a new apk will be published here and it will, with a little delay, be available on Fdroid.