rclone/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to rclone

This is a short guide on how to contribute things to rclone.

Reporting a bug

If you've just got a question or aren't sure if you've found a bug then please use the rclone forum instead of filing an issue.

When filing an issue, please include the following information if possible as well as a description of the problem. Make sure you test with the latest beta of rclone:

• Rclone version (eg output from rclone -V)
• Which OS you are using and how many bits (eg Windows 7, 64 bit)
• The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)
• A log of the command with the -vv flag (eg output from rclone -vv copy /tmp remote:tmp)
  • if the log contains secrets then edit the file with a text editor first to obscure them

Submitting a pull request

If you find a bug that you'd like to fix, or a new feature that you'd like to implement then please submit a pull request via Github.

If it is a big feature then make an issue first so it can be discussed.

You'll need a Go environment set up with GOPATH set. See the Go getting started docs for more info.

First in your web browser press the fork button on rclone's Github page.

Now in your terminal

go get github.com/ncw/rclone
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ncw/rclone
git remote rename origin upstream
git remote add origin git@github.com:YOURUSER/rclone.git

Make a branch to add your new feature

git checkout -b my-new-feature

And get hacking.

When ready - run the unit tests for the code you changed

go test -v

Note that you may need to make a test remote, eg TestSwift for some of the unit tests.

Note the top level Makefile targets

• make check
• make test

Both of these will be run by Travis when you make a pull request but you can do this yourself locally too. These require some extra go packages which you can install with

• make build_dep

Make sure you

• Add documentation for a new feature (see below for where)
• Add unit tests for a new feature
• squash commits down to one per feature
• rebase to master git rebase master

When you are done with that

git push origin my-new-feature

Go to the Github website and click Create pull request.

You patch will get reviewed and you might get asked to fix some stuff.

If so, then make the changes in the same branch, squash the commits, rebase it to master then push it to Github with --force.

Testing

rclone's tests are run from the go testing framework, so at the top level you can run this to run all the tests.

go test -v ./...

rclone contains a mixture of unit tests and integration tests. Because it is difficult (and in some respects pointless) to test cloud storage systems by mocking all their interfaces, rclone unit tests can run against any of the backends. This is done by making specially named remotes in the default config file.

If you wanted to test changes in the drive backend, then you would need to make a remote called TestDrive.

You can then run the unit tests in the drive directory. These tests are skipped if TestDrive: isn't defined.

cd drive
go test -v

You can then run the integration tests which tests all of rclone's operations. Normally these get run against the local filing system, but they can be run against any of the remotes.

cd ../fs
go test -v -remote TestDrive:
go test -v -remote TestDrive: -subdir

If you want to run all the integration tests against all the remotes, then run in that directory

go run test_all.go

Writing Documentation

If you are adding a new feature then please update the documentation.

If you add a new flag, then if it is a general flag, document it in docs/content/docs.md - the flags there are supposed to be in alphabetical order. If it is a remote specific flag, then document it in docs/content/remote.md.

The only documentation you need to edit are the docs/content/*.md files. The MANUAL.*, rclone.1, web site etc are all auto generated from those during the release process. See the make doc and make website targets in the Makefile if you are interested in how. You don't need to run these when adding a feature.

Documentation for rclone sub commands is with their code, eg cmd/ls/ls.go.

Making a release

There are separate instructions for making a release in the RELEASE.md file.

Commit messages

Please make the first line of your commit message a summary of the change, and prefix it with the directory of the change followed by a colon. The changelog gets made by looking at just these first lines so make it good!

If you have more to say about the commit, then enter a blank line and carry on the description. Remember to say why the change was needed - the commit itself shows what was changed.

If the change fixes an issue then write Fixes #1234 in the commit message. This can be on the subject line if it will fit. If you don't want to close the associated issue just put #1234 and the change will get linked into the issue.

Here is an example of a short commit message:

drive: add team drive support - fixes #885

And here is an example of a longer one:

mount: fix hang on errored upload

In certain circumstances if an upload failed then the mount could hang
indefinitely. This was fixed by closing the read pipe after the Put
completed.  This will cause the write side to return a pipe closed
error fixing the hang.

Fixes #1498

Adding a dependency

rclone uses the dep tool to manage its dependencies. All code that rclone needs for building is stored in the vendor directory for perfectly reproducable builds.

The vendor directory is entirely managed by the dep tool.

To add a new dependency

dep ensure github.com/pkg/errors

You can add constraints on that package (see the dep documentation), but don't unless you really need to.

Please check in the changes generated by dep including the vendor directory and Godep.toml and Godep.locl in a single commit separate from any other code changes. Watch out for new files in vendor.

Updating a dependency

If you need to update a dependency then run

dep ensure -update github.com/pkg/errors

Check in in a single commit as above.

Updating all the dependencies

In order to update all the dependencies then run make update. This just runs dep ensure -update. Check in the changes in a single commit as above.

This should be done early in the release cycle to pick up new versions of packages in time for them to get some testing.

Updating a backend

If you update a backend then please run the unit tests and the integration tests for that backend.

Assuming the backend is called remote, make create a config entry called TestRemote for the tests to use.

Now cd remote and run go test -v to run the unit tests.

Then cd fs and run go test -v -remote TestRemote: to run the integration tests.

The next section goes into more detail about the tests.

Writing a new backend

Choose a name. The docs here will use remote as an example.

Note that in rclone terminology a file system backend is called a remote or an fs.

Research

• Look at the interfaces defined in fs/fs.go
• Study one or more of the existing remotes

Getting going

• Create remote/remote.go (copy this from a similar remote)
  • onedrive is a good one to start from if you have a directory based remote
  • b2 is a good one to start from if you have a bucket based remote
• Add your remote to the imports in fs/all/all.go
• HTTP based remotes are easiest to maintain if they use rclone's rest module, but if there is a really good go SDK then use that instead.

Unit tests

• Create a config entry called TestRemote for the unit tests to use
• Add your fs to the end of fstest/fstests/gen_tests.go
• generate remote/remote_test.go unit tests cd fstest/fstests; go generate
• Make sure all tests pass with go test -v

Integration tests

• Add your fs to fs/test_all.go
• Make sure integration tests pass with
  • cd fs
  • go test -v -remote TestRemote:
• If you are making a bucket based remote, then check with this also
  • go test -v -remote TestRemote: -subdir
• And if your remote defines ListR this also
  • go test -v -remote TestRemote: -fast-list

Add your fs to the docs - you'll need to pick an icon for it from fontawesome. Keep lists of remotes in alphabetical order but with the local file system last.

• README.md - main Github page
• docs/content/remote.md - main docs page
• docs/content/overview.md - overview docs
• docs/content/docs.md - list of remotes in config section
• docs/content/about.md - front page of rclone.org
• docs/layouts/chrome/navbar.html - add it to the website navigation
• bin/make_manual.py - add the page to the docs constant
• cmd/cmd.go - the main help for rclone