Add 'Improve the website' section to CONTRIBUTING (#1366)

[github/Chocobozzz/PeerTube.git] / .github / CONTRIBUTING.md

# Welcome to the contributing guide for PeerTube

Interested in contributing? Awesome!

**Quick Links:**

  * [Translate](#translate)
  * [Give your feedback](#give-your-feedback)
  * [Write documentation](#write-documentation)
  * [Develop](#develop)
  * [Improve the website](#improve-the-website)

## Translate

You can help us to translate the PeerTube interface to many languages! See [the documentation](/support/doc/translation.md) to know how.


## Give your feedback

You don't need to know how to code to start contributing to PeerTube! Other
contributions are very valuable too, among which: you can test the software and
report bugs, you can give feedback on potential bugs, features that you are
interested in, user interface, design, decentralized architecture...


## Write documentation

You can help to write the documentation of the REST API, code, architecture,
demonstrations.

For the REST API you can see the documentation in [/support/doc/api](/support/doc/api) directory.
Then, you can just open the `openapi.yaml` file in a special editor like [http://editor.swagger.io/](http://editor.swagger.io/) to easily see and edit the documentation.

Some hints:
 * Routes are defined in [/server/controllers/](/server/controllers/) directory
 * Parameters validators are defined in [/server/middlewares/validators](/server/middlewares/validators) directory
 * Models sent/received by the controllers are defined in [/shared/models](/shared/models) directory


## Improve the website

PeerTube's website is [joinpeertube.org](https://joinpeertube.org), where people can learn about the project and how it works – note that it is not a PeerTube instance, but rather the project's homepage.

You can help us improve it too!

It is not hosted on GitHub but on [Framasoft](https://framasoft.org/)'s own [GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/) instance, [FramaGit](https://framagit.org): https://framagit.org/framasoft/peertube/joinpeertube


## Develop

Don't hesitate to talk about features you want to develop by creating/commenting an issue
before you start working on them :).

### Prerequisites

First, you should use a server or PC with at least 4GB of RAM. Less RAM may lead to crashes.

Make sure that you have followed 
[the steps](/support/doc/dependencies.md) 
to install the dependencies.

Then clone the sources and install node modules:

```
$ git clone https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
$ cd PeerTube
$ yarn install --pure-lockfile
```

Note that development is done on the `develop` branch. If you want to hack on
Peertube, you should switch to that branch. Also note that you have to repeat
the `yarn install --pure-lockfile` command.

Then, create a postgres database and user with the values set in the
`config/default.yaml` file. For instance, if you do not change the values
there, the following commands would create a new database called `peertube_dev`
and a postgres user called `peertube` with password `peertube`:

```
# sudo -u postgres createuser -P peertube
Enter password for new role: peertube
# sudo -u postgres createdb -O peertube peertube_dev
```

Then enable extensions PeerTube needs:

```
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;" peertube_dev
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION unaccent;" peertube_dev
```

In dev mode, administrator username is **root** and password is **test**.

### Server side

You can find a documentation of the server code/architecture [here](/support/doc/development/server/code.md).

To develop on the server-side:

```
$ npm run dev:server
```

Then, the server will listen on `localhost:9000`. When server source files
change, these are automatically recompiled and the server will automatically
restart.

### Client side

You can find a documentation of the server code/architecture
[here](/support/doc/development/client/code.md).


To develop on the client side:

```
$ npm run dev:client
```

The API will listen on `localhost:9000` and the frontend on `localhost:3000`.
Client files are automatically compiled on change, and the web browser will
reload them automatically thanks to hot module replacement.

### Client and server side

The API will listen on `localhost:9000` and the frontend on `localhost:3000`.
File changes are automatically recompiled, injected in the web browser (no need to refresh manually)
and the web server is automatically restarted.

```
$ npm run dev
```

Depending on your OS, you may face the following error :
```
$ [nodemon] Internal watch failed: ENOSPC: no space left on device, watch '/PeerTube/dist'
```

This is due to your system's limit on the number of files you can monitor for live-checking changes. For example, Ubuntu uses inotify and this limit is set to 8192. Then you need to change this limit :
```
echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p
```

See more information here : https://github.com/guard/listen/wiki/Increasing-the-amount-of-inotify-watchers

### Configurations for VPS

If you want to develop using a Virtual Private Server, you will need to configure the url for the API and the hostname. First, you need to edit the [client/src/environments/environment.hmr.ts](client/src/environments/environment.hmr.ts) file by replacing the `localhost` in the `apiUrl` field with the address of your VPS. Thus, the [Hot Module Replacement](https://webpack.js.org/concepts/hot-module-replacement/) from Webpack will be set up for developping with live-reload.

Next, you will need to edit the [config/default.yaml](config/default.yaml) file. Just replace the `localhost` with your VPS address in the following `hostname` fields :
```
listen:
  hostname: 'my-vps-address.net'
  port: 9000

webserver:
  https: false
  hostname: 'my-vps-address.net'
  port: 9000
```

Then, you just need to listen to `https://my-vps-address.net:3000/` in your web browser.

### Federation

Create a PostgreSQL user **with the same name as your username** in order to avoid using the *postgres* user.
Then, we can create the databases (if they don't already exist):

```
$ sudo -u postgres createuser you_username --createdb
$ createdb -O peertube peertube_test{1,2,3}
```

Build the application and flush the old tests data:

```
$ npm run build
$ npm run clean:server:test
```

This will run 3 nodes:

```
$ npm run play
```

Then you will get access to the three nodes at `http://localhost:900{1,2,3}`
with the `root` as username and `test{1,2,3}` for the password.

Instance configurations are in `config/test-{1,2,3}.yaml`.

### Unit tests

Create a PostgreSQL user **with the same name as your username** in order to avoid using the *postgres* user.

Then, we can create the databases (if they don't already exist):

```
$ sudo -u postgres createuser you_username --createdb --superuser
$ createdb -O peertube peertube_test{1,2,3,4,5,6}
```

Build the application and run the unit/integration tests:

```
$ npm run build
$ npm test
```

If you just want to run 1 test:

```
$ npm run mocha -- --exit --require ts-node/register/type-check --bail server/tests/api/index.ts
```

Instance configurations are in `config/test-{1,2,3,4,5,6}.yaml`.
Note that only instance 2 has transcoding enabled.