Otter Library - How to contribute

Thank you for considering contributing to Otter! We welcome all contributions, and appreciate your effort in improving our project. To ensure a smooth contribution process, please follow the guidelines below.

Feature Requests

Please create a new issue on our repository and choose "Feature request". This will allow us to review and prioritize your request accordingly.

Submitting an Issue

Before you submit an issue, please make sure the issue is not already in our issues backlog.

The issue creation template requires:

• a description of the failing use case
• the version of library where the issue occurs
• NodeJS version
• a fix suggestion, if possible

If you already have a fix for the problem don't hesitate to open a pull request. Each pull request should be assigned to an issue, so please create the issue and link it to the PR.

Creating a pull request

When creating a pull request, please link the corresponding issue in the pull request description. This will help us track the progress of your contribution and ensure that it is reviewed in a timely manner.

Commit message constraints

In order to have a nice change log generated, you will need to follow some guidelines:

• For bugfix: git commit -m "[fix|fixes|bugfix|bugfixes]: this is a commit message for a fix"
• For feature: git commit -m "[feat|feature|features]: this is a commit message for a feature"
• For documentation: the commit message should contain the word doc, docs or documentation
• For breaking change: the commit message should contain the word breaking, breaking change, breaking changes, breaking-change or breaking-changes

Those are common examples, for more information don't hesitate to have a look at https://github.com/conventional-changelog/commitlint/#what-is-commitlint

Rules for Contributions

When contributing, please keep in mind the following rules:

• Make only non-breaking changes in minor versions. Enhancements to existing code are possible - please discuss it beforehand with the Otter team via a feature request.
• If the new feature you are adding is replacing an existing one, please deprecate the old code in minor versions. Add the @deprecated tag in the JSDoc while mentioning the major version when it will be removed. Note that only even major Otter versions allow costly breaking changes. The cost of the breaking change will be determined by the responsible team at code review time (see Versioning rules).
  A breaking change can be effective only from the major version n + 2 after the deprecation.
• Please ensure that you are submitting quality code, specifically make sure that the changes comply with our code styling convention.

Style guide

• Always write description comments for methods and properties
• A description comment must use the pattern /** [Your comment] */
• Linter tasks must pass
• Add relevant Unit Tests
• E2E tests must pass (check how to update screenshots for visual testing)
• Any change should be followed by changes in the generator whenever it's applicable
• Properties should have the most restricted type possible

:no_entry_sign: private type: string;
:white_check_mark: private type: "A" | "B";

To ease the process, we are providing a set of:

• Editors configuration
• Linters configuration
• Component generator (and more)

Accelerate your build thanks to Nx Cloud

Nx Cloud offers a way to accelerate the build of your project locally thanks to Remote Cache.

To be able to benefit from this feature, you will need to perform the following steps:

1. Create an account on Nx Cloud App
2. Create a Personal Access Token on profile page.
3. Follow Nx Cloud instruction to set up your previously generated PAT.

When building (yarn build) the project on the main branch (or another release/* branch), the remote cache will be downloaded.

[!NOTE] Only Otter Team members can write Remote Cache on Nx Cloud, logged-in users will be able to use Remote Cache in readonly mode. The Local Cache is available for all users (logged or not to Nx Cloud).

DevTools to create new Otter monorepo elements

To help developers create new items in the Otter monorepo, several scripts have been provided at root level to accelerate development:

• Create a new scope: yarn create:scope <scope-name>
• Create a new package: yarn ng g library @<scope-name>/<library-name>

[!NOTE] The dependencies of the monorepo need to be installed (thanks to the command yarn install) before running the scripts.

Code review process

After submitting a pull request, you will receive feedback from the Otter team. The review process will continue until the pull request is ready to be merged.

Rules for reviewers

As a reviewer, please follow these guidelines:

• When using the Request changes option, please include at least one comment with a specific change required. A question alone does not count as a change requirement. This option indicates that the reviewer is not in favor of merging the pull request until the requested changes are made.
• When using the Approved option, the reviewer may still include change requests if desired. This option indicates that the reviewer is in favor of merging the pull request as-is, but suggests that the author may wish to consider making some small changes.
• Always stay polite and professional in your comments.
• The purpose of comments is to suggest improvements, ask a question or request for a change.
• Comments should be constructive and suggest ways to improve things.
• Request changes option shouldn't be used if the comments consist only of questions.

Thanks in advance for your contribution, and we look forward to hearing from you :)