session-desktop/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributor Guidelines

Advice for new contributors

Start small. The PRs most likely to be merged are the ones that make small, easily reviewed changes with clear and specific intentions.

Guidelines on Pull Requests.

It's a good idea to gauge interest in your intended work by finding the current issue for it or creating a new one yourself. Use Github issues as a place to signal your intentions and get feedback from the users most likely to appreciate your changes.

You're most likely to have your pull request accepted if it addresses an existing Github issue marked with the good-first-issue tag, these issues are specifically tagged, because they are generally features/bug fixes which can be cleanly merged on a single platform without requiring cross platform work, are generally of lower complexity than larger features and are non contentious, meaning that the core team doesn't need to try and assess the community desire for such a feature before merging.

Of course we encourage community developers to work on ANY issue filed on our Github regardless of how it’s tagged, however if you pick up or create an issue without the “Good first issue” tag it would be best if you leave a comment on the issue so that the core team can give you any guidance required, especially around UI heavy features or issues which require cross platform integration.

Development setup

Tips

Node.js

You'll need a Node.js version which matches our current version. You can check .nvmrc in the unstable branch to see what the current version is.

If you use other node versions you might have or need a node version manager.

• nvm - you can run nvm use in the project directory and it will use the node version specified in .nvmrc.
• Some node version management tools can read from the .nvmrc file and automatically make the change. If you use asdf you can make a config change to support the .nvmrc file.
• We use Yarn Classic as our package manager. You can install it by running npm install --global yarn.

Python

You will need a Python version which matches our current version. You can check .tool-versions in the unstable branch to see what the current version is.

If you use other python versions you might have or need a python version manager.

• asdf - you can run asdf install in the project directory and it will use the python version specified in .tool-versions.

[!WARNING] The package setuptools was removed in Python 3.12, so you'll need to install it manually.

pip install setuptools

Linux

• Depending on your distribution, you might need to install hunspell and your specific locale (hunspell-<lang>) e.g. hunspell-en-au.

• Install the required build tools for your operating system

  Debian/Ubuntu

  This will install make, g++, gcc, etc.

  sudo apt install build-essential cmake
  

  Fedora

  sudo dnf install make automake gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel
  

• Git setup

  You may need to disable core.autocrlf to prevent line ending issues.

  git config --global core.autocrlf false
  

• Install Node.JS

  We recommend using nvm or asdf.

  You can get the current <version> from the .nvmrc.

• Verify your Python version.

  Most modern Linux distributions should come with Python 3 pre-installed.

  It should be equal to or greater than the version specified in the .tool-versions.

• Install setuptools.

  pip install setuptools
  

• Install Yarn Classic

  npm install --global yarn
  

macOS

• Install the Xcode Command-Line Tools.

  Optional: Install Homebrew.

• Install Git.

  We recommend using Homebrew to install Git.

    brew install git
  

  After installing Git, you may need to disable core.autocrlf to prevent line ending issues.

  git config --global core.autocrlf false
  

• Install Node.JS

  We recommend using nvm or asdf.

  You can get the current <version> from the .nvmrc.

• Install Python

  We recommend using asdf.

  You can get the current <version> from the .tool-versions.

• Install setuptools.

  pip install setuptools
  

• Install Yarn Classic

  npm install --global yarn
  

Windows

Building on Windows can be a bit tricky. You can set this up manually, but we recommend using Chocolatey to install the necessary dependencies.

The following instructions will install the following:

• Git
• CMake
• Visual Studio 2022
• Visual Studio C++ Build Tools
• Node.js
• Python

Setup instructions for Windows using Chocolatey:

• Open PowerShell as Administrator

• Install Chocolatey

  Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
  

[!WARNING] Make sure to read the Chocolatey output for each choco install step. It will tell you if you need to restart your terminal or computer. If you don't do this, you may encounter issues with the next steps.

• Install Git

  choco install git
  

  After installing Git, you may need to disable core.autocrlf to prevent line ending issues.

  git config --global core.autocrlf false
  

• Install CMake

  CMake does not add itself to the system path by default, so you'll need specify the ADD_CMAKE_TO_PATH argument.

  choco install cmake --installargs 'ADD_CMAKE_TO_PATH=System'
  

• Install Visual Studio 2022

  choco install visualstudio2022community
  

[!WARNING] This next step will likely take a long time. Make sure to restart your computer once it is finished.

• Install Visual C++ build tools workload for Visual Studio 2022

  choco install visualstudio2022-workload-vctools
  

• Install Node.js

  If you have multiple node version installed and/or use a node version manager you should install a Node how you normally would.

  If you are using nvm for windows you will need to run nvm install <version> and nvm use <version> as it doesn't support .nvmrc files.

  You can get the current <version> from the .nvmrc.

  choco install nodejs --version <version>
  

• Install Python

  You can get the current <version> from the .tool-versions.

  choco install python --version <version>
  

• Install setuptools

  pip install setuptools
  

• Install Yarn Classic

  npm install --global yarn
  

  You'll likely encounter an issue with windows preventing you from running scripts when you run the yarn command, See: Exclusion Policies. If you do, you can fix it by running the following command:

  Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
  

Build and run

Now, run these commands in your preferred terminal in a good directory for development:

git clone https://github.com/session-foundation/session-desktop.git
cd session-desktop
npm install --global yarn      # (only if you don’t already have `yarn`)
yarn install --frozen-lockfile # Install and build dependencies (this will take a while)
yarn build-everything
yarn test                      # A good idea to make sure tests run first
yarn start-prod                # Start Session!

This will build the project and start the application in production mode.

Troubleshooting

The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly. Rather than run without sandboxing I'm aborting now.

This error is caused by the Electron sandbox not being able to run. This is a security feature and not a bug. You can run the application with the --no-sandbox flag to disable this behavior.

yarn start-prod --no-sandbox   # Start Session!

Python was not found; run without arguments to install from the Microsoft Store, or disable this shortcut from Settings > Manage App Execution Aliases.

We use the python3 command for many of our scripts. If you have installed Python using Chocolatey, you will need to create an alias for python3 that points to python. Alternatively, you can update the scripts to use python instead of python3.

Hot reloading

More often than not, you'll need to restart the application regularly to see your changes, as there is no automatic restart mechanism for the entire application.

You can keep the developer tools open (View > Toggle Developer Tools) and press Cmd + R (macOS) or Ctrl + R (Windows & Linux) to reload the application frontend.

# Runs until you stop it, re-generating built assets on file changes.

# Once this command is waiting for changes, you will need to run in another terminal
# `yarn build:workers` to fix the "exports undefined" error on start.

# Terminal A
yarn build-everything:watch # this process will keep running until you stop it

# Terminal B
yarn build:workers

# If you change any SASS files while running "yarn build-everything:watch" it won't be detected.
# You will need to run the sass build command.

# Terminal B
yarn sass

Running multiple instances

Since there is no registration restrictions for Session, you can make as many accounts as you want. Each client however has a dedicated storage profile on your machine which is determined by the environment and instance variables.

To run a new instance, you can set the MULTI environment variable to a unique value.

# Terminal A
yarn start-prod # Start Session!

# Terminal B
MULTI=1 yarn start-prod # Start another instance of Session!

Storage profile locations

• Linux ~/.config/
• macOS ~/Library/Application Support/
• Windows %AppData%/

This storage profile folder will change directories from [PROFILE_PATH]/Session-{environment} to [PROFILE_PATH]/Session-{environment}{instance}.

For example, running:

# Terminal A
MULTI=alice yarn start-prod

# Terminal B
MULTI=bob yarn start-prod

Will run the development environment with the alice and bob instances and thus create separate storage profiles. The storage profiles will be stored at [PROFILE_PATH]/Session-devalice and [PROFILE_PATH]/Session-devbob.

Making changes

So you're in the process of preparing that pull request. Here's how to make that go smoothly.

Testing

Please write tests! Our testing framework is mocha and our assertion library is chai.

The easiest way to run all tests at once is yarn test.

Commit your changes

Before a commit is accepted the staged changes will be formatted using prettier and linted using eslint. The commit will be reverted if files are formatted or lint errors are returned.

Commit Message Conventions

This project follows Conventional Commits

Commit messages will be checked using husky and commitlint.

Pull requests

So you wanna make a pull request? Please observe the following guidelines.

• First, make sure that your yarn ready run passes - it's very similar to what our Continuous Integration servers do to test the app.
• Never use plain strings right in the source code - pull them from messages.json! You only need to modify the default locale _locales/en/messages.json. Other locales are generated automatically based on that file and then periodically uploaded to Crowdin for translation. If you add or change strings in messages.json you will need to run yarn buid:locales-soft this command generates updated TypeScript type definitions to ensure you aren't using a localization key which doesn't exist.
• Please do not submit pull requests for pure translation fixes. Anyone can update the translations at Crowdin.
• Rebase your changes on the latest unstable branch, resolving any conflicts. This ensures that your changes will merge cleanly when you open your PR.
• Be sure to add and run tests!
• Make sure the diff between unstable and your branch contains only the minimal set of changes needed to implement your feature or bug fix. This will make it easier for the person reviewing your code to approve the changes. Please do not submit a PR with commented out code or unfinished features.
• Avoid meaningless or too-granular commits. If your branch contains commits like the lines of "Oops, reverted this change" or "Just experimenting, will delete this later", please squash or rebase those changes away.
• Don't have too few commits. If you have a complicated or long lived feature branch, it may make sense to break the changes up into logical atomic chunks to aid in the review process.
• Provide a well written and nicely formatted commit message. See this link for some tips on formatting. As far as content, try to include in your summary
  1. What you changed
  2. Why this change was made (including git issue # if appropriate)
  3. Any relevant technical details or motivations for your implementation choices that may be helpful to someone reviewing or auditing the commit history in the future. When in doubt, err on the side of a longer commit message.

Above all, spend some time with the repository. Follow the pull request template added to your pull request description automatically. Take a look at recent approved pull requests, see how they did things.

Production Builds

You can build a production binary by running the following:

yarn build-everything
yarn build-release

The binaries will be placed inside the release/ folder.

Linux

You can change in package.json "target": ["deb"], to any of the electron-builder targets to build for another target.