How to become a CIVL developer

• If you are interested in contributing to the development of CIVL, send an email to civl-users@… expressing your interest, and we'll get back to you. We can use help in many areas, including testing and creating new examples, and we are very open to new ideas on all aspects of the project.
• The lead developer will perform the following tasks:
  • Add you to the civl-dev@… email list. You will be able to read and post messages to this group. Use it to discuss any development issues.
  • Create a Subversion account for you in the appropriate projects (CIVL, ABC, SARL, GMC). You will then be able to commit to the branches directories in those repositories. (All of the repositories are already world-readable.)
  • Create a Trac account for you. You will then be able to create and modify bug/issue tickets, and write to the Wiki. (The tickets and Wiki are already world-readable.)

How to make changes or additions to CIVL

1. To make any changes or additions to CIVL, you must first become a CIVL developer. See above.
2. Before embarking on any major changes or additions, talk to the other developers. This is best done using the email list civl-dev@…. Explain what you want to do, and listen to the feedback.
3. Create a new branch for the new features you want to add into CIVL. Name your branch anything you like and create it in the branches directory of the repository.
4. Proceed with development of your branch, committing as often as you like. Periodically, merge changes from the trunk into your branch, and resolve any conflicts that result. This will make it much easier to integrate your branch into the trunk later on. Be sure to follow the CIVL Coding Standards and the Coding Standards for CIVL models.
5. Create unit tests and system tests for your new code, making sure they provide 100% statement coverage of your code, at a minimum. You may also need to make changes to existing tests.
6. Have at least one other CIVL developer review your code. Your reviewer will make suggestions for improvements. Iterate until both of you are satisfied.
7. When you feel your branch is complete, send an email to civl-dev@…. In the email, give the name of your branch and summarize the changes/additions you have made. We will then schedule a CIVL meeting where your contribution will be discussed. All developers will be given some time to review your branch before the meeting.
8. At the meeting, your branch will either be accepted or it will be rejected with suggestions for further changes. If accepted, it will be merged into the trunk. Only the lead developers have permission to do this merge. If further changes are suggested, a future meeting will be scheduled to discuss again.

We recommend using the Eclipse IDE to write CIVL code. Remember to set your Java code formatter as "built-in 2.1" in your Eclipse.

Using Subversion

(Ziqing, please clarify and fill in details below...)

• CIVL uses Subversion to manage source code. The CIVL Subversion repository is structured in the typical way. In particular, the repository contains directories named trunk, branches and tags.
• To create a new branch from the trunk of a specific revision r to branches: svn copy svn://vsl.cis.udel.edu/civl/trunk@r svn://vsl.cis.udel.edu/civl/branches/branch_name.
• Once a new branch created, you can check out your new branch with the command: svn co svn://vsl.cis.udel.edu/civl/branches/branch_name.
• Within your own branch, you can do any changes you want for your new feature and you can commit your changes to the svn server so that your won't lose your work.
• To keep being updated with the latest trunk, go to your local branch directory, type: svn merge svn://vsl.cis.udel.edu/civl/trunk ..
• Frequent update can help you reducing the work of resolving conflicts when you decide to merge your branch back to trunk finally.
• To merge your branch back to the trunk, go to your local branch directory, type: svn merge . svn://vsl.cis.udel.edu/civl/trunk.
• When you decide to merge your branch back to trunk, be sure you have resolved all conflicts against the trunk and all regression tests passed. Then one of the lead developer of CIVL will help you committing into the trunk after reviewing your work.