Submitting a Patch

Patches are the best way to provide a bug fix or to propose enhancements to Sylius.

Step 1: Setup your Environment

Install the Software Stack

Before working on Sylius, set a Symfony friendly environment up with the following software:

• Git
• PHP version 8.1 or above
• MySQL

Configure Git

Set your user information up with your real name and a working email address:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

Tip

If you are new to Git, you are highly recommended to read the excellent and free ProGit book.

Tip

If your IDE creates configuration files inside the directory of the project, you can use global .gitignore file (for all projects) or .git/info/exclude file (per project) to ignore them. See Github’s documentation.

Tip

Windows users: when installing Git, the installer will ask what to do with line endings, and will suggest replacing all LF with CRLF. This is the wrong setting if you wish to contribute to Sylius. Selecting the as-is method is your best choice, as Git will convert your line feeds to the ones in the repository. If you have already installed Git, you can check the value of this setting by typing:

git config core.autocrlf

This will return either “false”, “input” or “true”; “true” and “false” being the wrong values. Change it to “input” by typing:

git config --global core.autocrlf input

Replace –global by –local if you want to set it only for the active repository

Get the Sylius Source Code

Get the Sylius source code:

• Create a GitHub account and sign in;
• Fork the Sylius repository (click on the “Fork” button);
• After the “forking action” has completed, clone your fork locally (this will create a Sylius directory):

git clone [email protected]:USERNAME/Sylius.git

• Add the upstream repository as a remote:

cd sylius
git remote add upstream git://github.com/Sylius/Sylius.git

Step 2: Work on your Patch

The License

Before you start, you must know that all patches you are going to submit must be released under the MIT license, unless explicitly specified in your commits.

Choose the right Base Branch

Before starting to work on a patch, you must determine on which branch you need to work. It will be:

• 1.12, if you are fixing a bug for an existing feature or want to make a change that falls into the list of acceptable changes in patch versions
• 1.13, if you are adding a new feature.

Note

All bug fixes merged into the 1.12 maintenance branch are also merged into 1.13 on a regular basis.

Create a Topic Branch

Each time you want to work on a patch for a bug or on an enhancement, create a topic branch, starting from the previously chosen base branch:

git switch upstream/1.13 -c BRANCH_NAME

Tip

Use a descriptive name for your branch (issue_XXX where XXX is the GitHub issue number is a good convention for bug fixes).

The above checkout command automatically switches the code to the newly created branch (check the branch you are working on with git branch).

Work on your Patch

Work on the code as much as you want and commit as much as you want; but keep in mind the following:

• Practice BDD, which is the development methodology we use at Sylius;
• Follow coding standards (use git diff --check to check for trailing spaces – also read the tip below);
• Do atomic and logically separate commits (use the power of git rebase to have a clean and logical history);
• Squash irrelevant commits that are just about fixing coding standards or fixing typos in your own code;
• Never fix coding standards in some existing code as it makes the code review more difficult (submit CS fixes as a separate patch);
• In addition to this “code” pull request, you must also update the documentation when appropriate. See more in contributing documentation section.
• Write good commit messages (see the tip below).

Tip

A good commit message is composed of a summary (the first line), optionally followed by a blank line and a more detailed description. The summary should start with the Component you are working on in square brackets ([Cart], [Taxation], …). Use a verb (fixed ..., added ..., …) to start the summary and don’t add a period at the end.

Prepare your Patch for Submission

When your patch is not about a bug fix (when you add a new feature or change an existing one for instance), it must also include the following:

• An explanation of the changes in the relevant CHANGELOG file(s) (the [BC BREAK] or the [DEPRECATION] prefix must be used when relevant);
• An explanation on how to upgrade an existing application in the relevant UPGRADE file(s) if the changes break backward compatibility or if you deprecate something that will ultimately break backward compatibility.

Step 3: Submit your Patch

Whenever you feel that your patch is ready for submission, follow the following steps.

Rebase your Patch

Before submitting your patch, update your branch (needed if it takes you a while to finish your changes):

If you are basing on the 1.13 branch:

git checkout BRANCH_NAME # to make sure you're on the right branch
git rebase upstream/1.13

If you are basing on the 1.12 branch:

git checkout BRANCH_NAME # to make sure you're on the right branch
git rebase upstream/1.12

When doing the rebase command, you might have to fix merge conflicts. git status will show you the unmerged files. Resolve all the conflicts, then continue the rebase:

git add ... # add resolved files
git rebase --continue

Push your branch remotely:

git push --force-with-lease origin BRANCH_NAME

Make a Pull Request

Warning

Please remember that bug fixes must be submitted against the 1.12 branch, but features and deprecations against the 1.13 branch. Just accordingly to which branch you chose as the base branch before.

You can now make a pull request on the Sylius/Sylius GitHub repository.

To ease the core team work, always include the modified components in your pull request message, like in:

[Cart] Fixed something
[Taxation] [Addressing] Added something

The pull request description must include the following checklist at the top to ensure that contributions may be reviewed without needless feedback loops and that your contributions can be included into Sylius as quickly as possible:

| Q               | A
| --------------- | -----
| Branch?         | 1.12 or 1.13
| Bug fix?        | no/yes
| New feature?    | no/yes
| BC breaks?      | no/yes
| Deprecations?   | no/yes
| Related tickets | fixes #X, partially #Y, mentioned in #Z
| License         | MIT

An example submission could now look as follows:

| Q               | A
| --------------- | -----
| Branch?         | 1.12
| Bug fix?        | yes
| New feature?    | no
| BC breaks?      | no
| Deprecations?   | no
| Related tickets | fixes #12
| License         | MIT

The whole table must be included (do not remove lines that you think are not relevant).

Some answers to the questions trigger some more requirements:

• If you answer yes to “Bug fix?”, check if the bug is already listed in the Sylius issues and reference it/them in “Related tickets”;
• If you answer yes to “New feature?”, you should submit a pull request to the documentation;
• If you answer yes to “BC breaks?”, the patch must contain updates to the relevant CHANGELOG and UPGRADE files;
• If you answer yes to “Deprecations?”, the patch must contain updates to the relevant CHANGELOG and UPGRADE files;

If some of the previous requirements are not met, create a todo-list and add relevant items:

- [ ] Fix the specs as they have not been updated yet
- [ ] Submit changes to the documentation
- [ ] Document the BC breaks

If the code is not finished yet because you don’t have time to finish it or because you want early feedback on your work, add an item to todo-list:

- [ ] Finish the feature
- [ ] Gather feedback for my changes

As long as you have items in the todo-list, please prefix the pull request title with “[WIP]”.

In the pull request description, give as much details as possible about your changes (don’t hesitate to give code examples to illustrate your points). If your pull request is about adding a new feature or modifying an existing one, explain the rationale for the changes. The pull request description helps the code review.

Rework your Patch

Based on the feedback on the pull request, you might need to rework your patch. Before re-submitting the patch, rebase with your base branch (1.13 or 1.12), don’t merge; and force the push to the origin:

git rebase -f upstream/1.13
git push --force-with-lease origin BRANCH_NAME

or

git rebase -f upstream/1.12
git push --force-with-lease origin BRANCH_NAME

Note

When doing a push --force-with-lease, always specify the branch name explicitly to avoid messing other branches in the repo (--force-with-lease tells Git that you really want to mess with things so do it carefully).

Often, Sylius team members will ask you to “squash” your commits. This means you will convert many commits to one commit. To do this, use the rebase command:

git rebase -i upstream/1.13
git push --force-with-lease origin BRANCH_NAME

or

git rebase -i upstream/1.12
git push --force-with-lease origin BRANCH_NAME

After you type this command, an editor will popup showing a list of commits:

pick 1a31be6 first commit
pick 7fc64b4 second commit
pick 7d33018 third commit

To squash all commits into the first one, remove the word pick before the second and the last commits, and replace it by the word squash or just s. When you save, Git will start rebasing, and if successful, will ask you to edit the commit message, which by default is a listing of the commit messages of all the commits. When you are finished, execute the push command.