Contributing to easy-ftc

May 20, 2025 · View on GitHub

First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute!

All types of contributions are encouraged and valued. See the Table of Contents for different ways to help and details about how this project handles them. Please make sure to read the relevant section before making your contribution. It will make it a lot easier for us maintainers and smooth out the experience for all involved. The community looks forward to your contributions.

And if you like the project, but just don't have time to contribute, that's fine. There are other easy ways to support the project and show your appreciation, which we would also be very happy about:

Star the project

Tweet about it

Refer this project in your project's readme

Mention the project at local meetups and tell your friends/colleagues

Code of Conduct
I Have a Question
I Want To Contribute
Styleguides
Join The Project Team

Code of Conduct

This project and everyone participating in it is governed by the easy-ftc Code of Conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to camdenboren.

I Have a Question

If you want to ask a question, we assume that you have read the available Documentation.

Before you ask a question, it is best to search for existing Issues that might help you. In case you have found a suitable issue and still need clarification, you can write your question in this issue. It is also advisable to search the internet for answers first.

If you then still feel the need to ask a question and need clarification, we recommend the following:

Open an Issue.
Provide as much context as you can about what you're running into.
Provide project and platform versions (nodejs, npm, etc), depending on what seems relevant.

We will then take care of the issue as soon as possible.

I Want To Contribute

Legal Notice

When contributing to this project, you must agree that you have authored 100% of the content, that you have the necessary rights to the content and that the content you contribute may be provided under the project licence.

Reporting Bugs

Before Submitting a Bug Report

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Therefore, we ask you to investigate carefully, collect information and describe the issue in detail in your report. Please complete the following steps in advance to help us fix any potential bug as fast as possible.

Make sure that you are using the latest version.
Determine if your bug is really a bug and not an error on your side e.g. using incompatible environment components/versions (Make sure that you have read the documentation. If you are looking for support, you might want to check this section).
To see if other users have experienced (and potentially already solved) the same issue you are having, check if there is not already a bug report existing for your bug or error in the bug tracker.
Also make sure to search the internet (including Stack Overflow) to see if users outside of the GitHub community have discussed the issue.
Collect information about the bug:
- Stack trace (Traceback)
- OS, Platform and Version (Windows, Linux, macOS, x86, ARM)
- Version of the interpreter, compiler, SDK, runtime environment, package manager, depending on what seems relevant.
- Possibly your input and the output
- Can you reliably reproduce the issue? And can you also reproduce it with older versions?

How Do I Submit a Good Bug Report?

You must never report security related issues, vulnerabilities or bugs including sensitive information to the issue tracker, or elsewhere in public. Instead sensitive bugs must be sent to camdenboren.

We use GitHub issues to track bugs and errors. If you run into an issue with the project:

Open an Issue. (Since we can't be sure at this point whether it is a bug or not, we ask you not to talk about a bug yet and not to label the issue.)
Explain the behavior you would expect and the actual behavior.
Please provide as much context as possible and describe the reproduction steps that someone else can follow to recreate the issue on their own. This usually includes your code. For good bug reports you should isolate the problem and create a reduced test case.
Provide the information you collected in the previous section.

Once it's filed:

The project team will label the issue accordingly.
A team member will try to reproduce the issue with your provided steps. If there are no reproduction steps or no obvious way to reproduce the issue, the team will ask you for those steps and mark the issue as needs-repro. Bugs with the needs-repro tag will not be addressed until they are reproduced.
If the team is able to reproduce the issue, it will be marked needs-fix, as well as possibly other tags (such as critical), and the issue will be left to be implemented by someone.

Suggesting Enhancements

This section guides you through submitting an enhancement suggestion for easy-ftc, including completely new features and minor improvements to existing functionality. Following these guidelines will help maintainers and the community to understand your suggestion and find related suggestions.

Before Submitting an Enhancement

Make sure that you are using the latest version.
Read the documentation carefully and find out if the functionality is already covered, maybe by an individual configuration.
Perform a search to see if the enhancement has already been suggested. If it has, add a comment to the existing issue instead of opening a new one.
Find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. It's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's developers of the merits of this feature. Keep in mind that we want features that will be useful to the majority of our users and not just a small subset. If you're just targeting a minority of users, consider writing an add-on/plugin library.

How Do I Submit a Good Enhancement Suggestion?

Enhancement suggestions are tracked as GitHub issues.

Use a clear and descriptive title for the issue to identify the suggestion.
Provide a step-by-step description of the suggested enhancement in as many details as possible.
Describe the current behavior and explain which behavior you expected to see instead and why. At this point you can also tell which alternatives do not work for you.
You may want to include screenshots or screen recordings which help you demonstrate the steps or point out the part which the suggestion is related to. You can use LICEcap to record GIFs on macOS and Windows, and the built-in screen recorder in GNOME or SimpleScreenRecorder on Linux.
Explain why this enhancement would be useful to most easy-ftc users. You may also want to point out the other projects that solved it better and which could serve as inspiration.

Your First Code Contribution

Before submitting a PR, ensure it's addressed by the ToDo or a GitHub issue. Once you're sure the item is addressed in one (or both) of these locations, follow these steps:

Fork this repository

Check out the source code with:

git clone https://github.com/collegiate-edu-nation/easy-ftc.git

Switch to dev with
```
cd easy-ftc
git switch dev
```
Start a new git branch with
```
git checkout -b feature/your-feature
```
Make desired changes to easy-ftc/src (see Dev Setup for setting up the environment)
Add relevant tests to easy-ftc/src/test
Make sure your code, commit history, and branch name all follow the Styleguides, that your code is properly formatted ./gradlew format, that your branch builds ./gradlew build, and that the documentation builds ./gradlew docs
Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it

Dev Setup

Overview

Being an Android project, Gradle is the build system. Note the following

A Gradle wrapper is used for compatibility with established tooling
- Some tooling versions are also kept in sync w/ the FTC SDK for the same reason
Custom Gradle tasks have been created for
- Running coverage reports
- Generating docs
- Verifying format
- Zipping myBlocks

The custom tasks leverage these tools

Coverage
- Jacoco Gradle plugin
Documentation
- Javadoc Gradle plugin
- pip packages
  - MkDocs
  - Material for MkDocs
- PlantUML
Formatting
- Spotless Gradle plugin
- npm packages
  - prettier
  - npm-groovy-lint
- nixfmt

Altogether, properly building this project requires installing and configuring multiple package managers, binaries, runtimes, and interpreters. Thus, if you're not on Windows, I STRONGLY recommend using Nix instead of manually setting up the environment, as I wouldn't have bothered using multi-language solutions if this project wasn't powered by Nix

With that said, the development environment can be setup by either using Nix with your IDE of choice or by importing this project into Android Studio. Both options require that you make a local clone of this repo

git clone https://github.com/collegiate-edu-nation/easy-ftc.git

Nix

Nix is my preferred approach for setting up the development environment. Linux and macOS are supported

Enter directory
```
cd easy-ftc
```
Launch development environment
```
nix develop
```
Then open your preferred IDE from this shell

Optionally, leverage the binary cache by adding Garnix to your nix-config

nix.settings.substituters = [ "https://cache.garnix.io" ];
nix.settings.trusted-public-keys = [ "cache.garnix.io:CTFPyKSLcx5RMJKfLo5EEPUObbA78b0YQ2DTCJXqr9g=" ];

Non-Nix

The project can also be imported into Android Studio, where Windows is supported as well

To format source files, you must also install

Node.js v20.18.1 (LTS)
nixfmt
- Optional as long as no nix files are modified

Then

Enter the directory
```
cd easy-ftc
```
Install npm deps
```
npm i
```
Set JRE17_PATH (path to JRE 17 binary, will default to ~/.java-caller)
- Linux and macOS
```
export JRE17_PATH=path/to/jre17
```
- Windows
```
setx JRE17_PATH 'path\to\jre17'
```
Run the format task
```
./gradlew format
```
Append -x formatNix if nixfmt has not been installed

To generate documentation, you must also install

Python 3.12.7
PlantUML
- Optional as long as no puml files are modified

Then

Enter the directory
```
cd easy-ftc
```
Create venv (optional)
```
mkdir .venv
python -m venv .venv
```

Activate venv (optional)

Linux and macOS
```
source .venv/bin/activate
```
Windows
```
.venv/Scripts/activate
```

Install dependencies
```
pip install -r requirements.txt
```

Set PUML_PATH (path to PlantUML binary)

Linux and macOS
```
export PUML_PATH=path/to/plantuml
```
Windows
```
setx PUML_PATH 'path\to\plantuml'
```

Run the docs task
```
./gradlew docs
```
Append -x uml if PlantUML has not been installed

Known Quirks

Running the build using the Gradle extension for VSCode on NixOS fails as the extension doesn't seem to pass environment variables to the Gradle daemon correctly (note the setting of GRADLE_OPTS in flake.nix). The workaround is to invoke the build task manually via ./gradlew build
The coverage task will not work in Android Studio on Windows, but since it's simply an alias of sorts around createReleaseUnitTestCoverageReport, just invoke that task directly
- The task should work in Android Studio on Linux and macOS once JAVA_HOME is specified
  - Note that this is distinct from JRE17_PATH, which is only used for formatting Groovy scripts
There seems to be a longstanding bug in Android Studio on macOS where environment variables are not propagated properly, breaking several tasks. The workaround is to launch Android Studio from the terminal via open /Applications/Android\ Studio.app/

Ext	Fmt
java	google-java-format (aosp)
gradle	npm-groovy-lint
nix	nixfmt
md, yaml	prettier

Sonarlint is used to check code quality

Naming

Simplicity over descriptivity
camelCase for variables and functions
PascalCase for classes
SNAKE_CASE for constants

Javadoc

Only use one-liners for private and protected functions, classes
Include the following for public functions and classes (as applicable)
- @param
- @return
- @throws
Include the following for each Builder class
- Basic Usage
- Defaults (all default field values)
Override relevant inherited Builder methods

Commit Messages

Hard Rules

Concise
Appropriate
Prefix relevant task followed by a colon where applicable (see Prefixes)

Prefixes

Not all commits require a prefix (e.g. adding input validation), but these common tasks do

Any
- 'docs:' when adding a documentation topic
- 'fix:' when making minor fixes
- 'fmt:' when applying formatting
- 'merge:' when merging branches
- 'move:' for trivial refactoring
- 'rename:' when renaming things
- 'refactor:' for non-trivial refactoring
- 'update:' when updating trivial deps (e.g. plugins)
Java
- 'javadoc:' when editing javadoc comments
Markdown
- 'sectionName:' when editing a specific section

Other prefixes may be acceptable (e.g. 'uml:'), so use your discretion

Branch Names

Existing Branches

The latest release is 'main'
The development branch is 'dev'
The documentation branch is 'gh-pages'

Hard Rules

Consise
Appropriate
Prefix relevant task followed by a forward slash (see Prefixes)

Prefixes

'feature/' - when adding a feature
'update/' - when completing project-wide updates w/ fixes
'docs/' - when making major doc modifications
'test/' - when making major testing modifications

Join The Project Team

Requests to join the project team may be submitted to the responsible community leaders at camdenboren.

Attribution

This guide is based on the contributing-gen. Make your own!

Contributing to easy-ftc

Table of Contents

Code of Conduct

I Have a Question

I Want To Contribute

Legal Notice

Reporting Bugs

Before Submitting a Bug Report

How Do I Submit a Good Bug Report?

Suggesting Enhancements

Before Submitting an Enhancement

How Do I Submit a Good Enhancement Suggestion?

Your First Code Contribution

Dev Setup

Overview

Nix

Non-Nix

Known Quirks

ToDo

Styleguides

Source Files

Formatting and Quality

Naming

Javadoc

Commit Messages

Hard Rules

Prefixes

Branch Names

Existing Branches

Hard Rules

Prefixes

Join The Project Team

Attribution