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ipfs / js-ipfs

IPFS implementation in JavaScript
https://js.ipfs.tech
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RFC: Make it easier to contribute to js-ipfs #2061

Closed dirkmc closed 1 year ago

dirkmc commented 5 years ago

Currently it's quite complicated to contribute to js-ipfs because

  1. It's a large project with many moving parts
  2. Tests take a long time to run
  3. Most changes to js-ipfs require changes to dependent repos, eg interface-js-ipfs-core

I'm opening this issue as an RFC for ways to make it easier to contribute, please add your suggestions below.

dirkmc commented 5 years ago

I suggest we

dirkmc commented 5 years ago

I suggest we add a way to run specific sets of tests with a glob, eg just the http interface refs* tests

kav commented 5 years ago

Related proposal: https://github.com/ipfs/team-mgmt/issues/834

kav commented 5 years ago

Also, as a user who is not a contributor but has looked at contributing I'd propose there is another issue.

  1. Issues are often sufficiently clear to current contributors but not clear at all to new contributors. (e.g. https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs-http-client/issues/142)
hugomrdias commented 5 years ago

I suggest we add a way to run specific sets of tests with a glob, eg just the http interface refs* tests

you can do npx aegir test -t node --grep <pattern> to filter tests

dirkmc commented 5 years ago

Good tip @hugomrdias 👍 We should add that to the contributing guidelines

dirkmc commented 5 years ago

@kav that's a good point. I like the way that the go-filecoin project structure their issues, so that a new contributor not only has a lot of context but also is given an idea of where in the code to start, eg see https://github.com/filecoin-project/go-filecoin/issues/2729

Prabhakar-Poudel commented 5 years ago

One Elephant in the room I would say is a lot of open issues that I have come across, and spend some time debugging it turns out to be "not an issue anymore". We need to check all existing issues and prune the ones that are fixed already.

Prabhakar-Poudel commented 5 years ago

Another thing that could be improved is labeling the issues. "Help wanted" with "Difficulty: easy" sounds pretty much like "Good first issue", but my experience was it was not super easy even though it was marked so. The reason could be when we mark this issue we think it is easy because we have all the context of the issue whereas a beginner picking it up may have to spend hours to get around it. One way to improve this would be to mark the code points to look up to fix the issue, and a couple of pointers (doc, go implementation, etc) to go through before picking it up. This we should do for all "Difficulty: easy" issues.

dirkmc commented 5 years ago

Thanks @Prabhakar-Poudel that's good feedback. If you find an issue that you would be interested in taking on, but would like some context, please feel free to ask on that issue so you don't have to spend hours digging through the code

Prabhakar-Poudel commented 5 years ago

@dirkmc Also wondering why there are issues marked as "Priority: High" and open since 2016. This I have seen across repositories in ipfs domain. If it is marked high priority and not fixed for long (> 3 mo), I think we need to move it to low priority and add more information so that it becomes easy to pick them up.

SgtPooki commented 1 year ago

@tinytb are we handling this elsewhere (close this) or do we want to hold future backlog discussions in this issue (keep open)?

tinytb commented 1 year ago

I'd lean toward keeping open for now. When all the ideas worth doing are pulled out into separate issues (or done), then this issue can be closed.

tinytb commented 1 year ago

Also wondering why there are issues marked as "Priority: High" and open since 2016. This I have seen across repositories in ipfs domain. If it is marked high priority and not fixed for long (> 3 mo), I think we need to move it to low priority and add more information so that it becomes easy to pick them up.

Good suggestion. We recently started a recurring backlog grooming session every 2 weeks. During these sessions, we'll update high priority items that have been open for a long time; we will:

  1. Remove the priority, or
  2. Lower the priority, or
  3. Pick up the task and work on it.

We currently don't have enough engineers working on these issues, so this state is also a reflection of that lack of resources/time. We plan to hire multiple new team members in the coming months/year, so that will also drive some improvement here.

whizzzkid commented 1 year ago

js-ipfs is being deprecated in favor of Helia. You can follow the migration plan here https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/issues/4336 and read the migration guide.

This issue has been resolved in Helia! if this does not address your concern please let us know by reopening this issue before 2023-06-05!