Open development tools

Stefano Moia¹

1. Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain

10.11.2020

An overview to jump into your own first open development project à la Brainhack

	smoia
	@SteMoia
	s.moia.research@gmail.com

Stefano Moia, 2020

1. Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain

Open development tools

Stefano Moia¹

10.11.2020

An overview to jump into your own first open development project à la Brainhack

Open Development

Open (Source Scientific Software) Development: the idea of developing a scientific tool:

in an open and public way
sharing it from the beginning of the development
fostering a democratic community of contributors in support of the project
acknowledging all contributions
using version control and (automatic) testing

Two main elements: the tool itself and the community around it.

The tool or project is not necessarily code based!

Version Control

Version control systems are a way to manage and track changes to files.

VCS can be also found elsewhere (e.g. Wiki, GDocs, Box, ...)

Content

Aggregation/delivery

Does any of these situations look familiar?

I can't work on that project now because my colleague/friend/dog is working on [a different part than what I'd modify of] it at the moment...

A classic git(Hub) flow

Create branch "dev"

Commit

Merge dev into main

Diverging main

Merge main into dev

"Main" branch

Main

Dev

Bug

A classic git(Hub) flow

Create branch "dev"

Commit

Merge dev into main

Diverging main

Merge main into dev

"Main" branch

Fork ("upstream" vs "origin")

Pull from upstream

Merge origin/main into dev

Clone (local repository)

Pull Request

Pull from *

Push to *

Main

Dev

Upstream

Main

Origin

Dev

Main

(local)

Pull requests and Reviews

Some suggestions for...

Keep you contribution small and focused
Make your contribution as clear as possible
Use a review as a learning experience
Be patient: reviewers might ask you some more work than you expected, but it's always to improve your work.

Be kind and patient
Don't limit your review to the apparent changes
Keep your review to what's necessary for the contribution - if it would be nice to ..., write it doan and wait for the next contribution

... Authors

... Reviewers

Take home #1

Working with git/Hub
can be challenging, but it lets you work in parallel on the development of new features, without disrupting the "main" version of your project.

Bonus: it can force a team to double check projects!

Guiding the development: issues

Guiding the development: milestones

Guiding the development: labels

Not all communities use labels, and those that use them might use them differently!

Take home #2

Guide the development of your project using issues, milestones, and labels:

it will make your life easier and better organised.
it will make your project easier to understand for third parties.

Who's in charge?

Open Development is not just about the tool being develop.

The greatest thing you can develop is the community around it!

The development can be very driven and focused on key points.
Decision making is quick.
Users might not be engaged enough to value your project.
One developer = more time needed for new features, less reviewing.
Less stability in the group = more time training.

The development can become more based on the help of the volunteers.
Decision making takes a bit longer.
Sense of involvement and responsibility might increase (stable) contribution!
Many developers = less time needed for new features and better quality!
More stable people = more mentors.

Not all contributions are the same...

Independently from its kind, projects can have different types of contributions.

Different communities can have different requirements or follow different workflows.

Enters the contributors' guidelines
(and a code of conduct).

... but all should be recognised

Depending on the community and the governance scheme, contributions might be recognised differently. Explicitly writing down how the community does it helps new contributors to join.

One way of recognising contributors is the all-contributors specification.

Take home #3

There are advantages and disadvantages in any form of governance - choose yours from the start and state it clearly.

In any case, don't forget to recognise other people's work and take time to develop the community!

Testing 1 2 3 ...

Testing a project is as important as developing it.

Arguably, it's even more important, so spend time on it!

There are multiple types of tests:

User tests: a person (user) uses the tool and make a report on it.
Automated tests: developers write tests to be run after each change.

Releases

Making your project public is important: it will attract more users/readers and (possibly) more contributors.

Create a "release", and if the project is code-related, package it and distribute it!

License your work

A work that is not licensed is not public (paradox!)

There are many (open source) licenses to pick up from, not only code-related.

www.choosealicense.org

Deploy (release) it and give it a DOI.

One last thing: Let bots do the hard work

CI/CD workflows are your friend.

Continuous Integration: frequently integrating new changes into the main branch of a tool. Normally, workflows run automatic steps at each integration, e.g. automatic testing.
Continous Deployment: frequently deploying (releasing) new versions of a tool using automated workflows (e.g. right after integration).

Workflows can require a bit more work to be set up, but they can save a lot of time and energy in the long run!