Contributing to Barbican¶

Communication¶

IRC

People working on the Barbican project may be found in the #openstack-barbican channel on OFTC during working hours in their timezone. The channel is logged, so if you ask a question when no one is around, you can check the log to see if it’s been answered: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-barbican/

weekly meeting

Tuesdays at 13:00 UTC in #openstack-barbican on OFTC. Meetings are logged: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/barbican/

More information (including a link to the Agenda, some pointers on meeting etiquette, and an ICS file to put the meeting on your calendar) can be found at: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/#Barbican_Meeting

mailing list

We use the openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org mailing list for asynchronous discussions or to communicate with other OpenStack teams. Use the prefix [barbican] in your subject line (it’s a high-volume list, so most people use email filters).

More information about the mailing list, including how to subscribe and read the archives, can be found at: http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-discuss

meet-ups

The Barbican project usually has a presence at the OpenDev/OpenStack Project Team Gathering that takes place at the beginning of each development cycle. Planning happens on an etherpad whose URL is announced at the weekly meetings and on the mailing list.

Contacting the Core Team¶

The barbican-core team is an active group of contributors who are responsible for directing and maintaining the Barbican project. As a new contributor, your interaction with this group will be mostly through code reviews, because only members of barbican-core can approve a code change to be merged into the code repository.

You can learn more about the role of core reviewers in the OpenStack governance documentation: https://docs.openstack.org/contributors/common/governance.html#core-reviewer

The membership list of barbican-core is maintained in gerrit: https://review.opendev.org/#/admin/groups/178,members

New Feature Planning¶

The Barbican project uses both “specs” and “blueprints” to track new features. Here’s a quick rundown of what they are and how the Barbican project uses them.

specs

Exist in the barbican-specs repository. Each spec must have a story in StoryBoard associated with it for tracking purposes.

A spec is required for any new Barbican core feature, anything that changes the Key Manager API, or anything that entails a mass change to the existing codebase.

The specs repository is: https://opendev.org/openstack/barbican-specs

It contains a README.rst file explaining how to file a spec.

You can read rendered specs docs at:

https://specs.openstack.org/openstack/barbican-specs/

blueprints

Exist in StoryBoard, where they can be targeted to release milestones.

You file one at https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project/openstack/barbican-specs

Examples of changes that can be covered by a blueprint only are:

• adding a new backend; or

• adding support for a defined capability that already exists in one or more existing backends.

Feel free to ask in #openstack-barbican or at the weekly meeting if you have an idea you want to develop and you’re not sure whether it requires a blueprint and a spec or simply a blueprint.

The Barbican project observes the OpenStack-wide deadlines, for example, final release of non-client libraries (barbican), final release for client libraries (python-barbicanclient), feature freeze, etc. These are also noted and explained on the release schedule for the current development cycle.

Task Tracking¶

We track our tasks in StoryBoard. See the top of the page for the URL of each Barbican project deliverable.

If you’re looking for some smaller, easier work item to pick up and get started on, search for the ‘low-hanging-fruit’ tag in the Bugs section.

When you start working on a bug, make sure you assign it to yourself. Otherwise someone else may also start working on it, and we don’t want to duplicate efforts. Also, if you find a bug in the code and want to post a fix, make sure you file a bug (and assign it to yourself!) just in case someone else comes across the problem in the meantime.

Reporting a Bug¶

You found an issue and want to make sure we are aware of it? You can do so in the StoryBoard of the affected deliverable.

Getting Your Patch Merged¶

The Barbican project policy is that a patch must have two +2s before it can be merged. (Exceptions are documentation changes, which require only a single +2, and specs, for which the PTL may require more than two +2s, depending on the complexity of the proposal.)

Patches lacking unit tests are unlikely to be approved. Check out the testing-barbican section of the Barbican Contributors Guide for a discussion of the kinds of testing we do with barbican.

In addition, some changes may require a release note. Any patch that changes functionality, adds functionality, or addresses a significant bug should have a release note. You can find more information about how to write a release note in the release-notes section of the Barbican Contributors Guide.

Keep in mind that the best way to make sure your patches are reviewed in a timely manner is to review other people’s patches. We’re engaged in a cooperative enterprise here.

You can see who’s been doing what with Barbican recently in Stackalytics: https://www.stackalytics.com/report/activity?module=barbican-group

Project Team Lead Duties¶

All common PTL duties are enumerated in the PTL guide.