ethers.js/docs.wrm/contributing.wrm

_section: Contributing and Hacking @<contributing>

The ethers.js library is something that I've written out of necessity,
and has grown somewhat organically over time.

Many things are the way they are for good (at the time, at least) reasons,
but I always welcome criticism, and am completely willing to have my mind
changed on things.

Pull requests are always welcome, but please keep a few points in mind:

- Backwards-compatibility-breaking changes will not be accepted; they may be
  considered for the next major version
- Security is important; adding dependencies require fairly convincing
  arguments as to why
- The library aims to be lean, so keep an eye on the dist/ethers.min.js
  file size before and after your changes
- Keep the PR simple and readable; only modify files in the ``docs.wrm/``
  and ``packages/*/src.ts/`` folders, as this allows the changes to be easily
  verified
- Add test cases for both expected and unexpected input
- Any new features need to be supported by me (future issues, documentation,
  testing, migration), so anything that is overly complicated or specific
  may not be accepted

In general, **please start an issue //before// beginning a pull request**, so we can
have a public discussion and figure out the best way to address the problem/feature.
**:)**


_subsection: Building @<contributing--building>

The build process for ethers is unfortunatly not super trivial, but
I have attempted to make it as straight-forward as possible.

It is a mono-repo which attempts to be compatibile with a large
number of environments, build tools and platforms, which is why
there are a some weird things it must do.

There are several custom scripts in the ``misc/admin`` folder
to help manage the monorepo. Developers working on contributing
to ethers should not generally need to worry about those, since
they are wrapped up behind ``npm run SCRIPT`` operations.

_code: Installing @lang<shell>

# Clone the repository
/home/ricmoo> git clone https://github.com/ethers-io/ethers.js.git

/home/ricmoo> cd ethers.js

# Install all dependencies:
# - Hoists all sub-package dependencies in the package.json (preinstall)
# - Installs all the (hoisted) dependencies and devDependencies (install)
# - Build the rat-nests (in .package_node_modules) (postinstall)
# - Create a dependency graph for the TypeScript (postinstall)
# - Link the rat-nets into each project (postinstall)
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm install

_heading: Making Changes @<contributing--updating>

Once your environment is set up, you should be able to simply
start the ``auto-build`` feature, and make changes to the
TypeScript source.

_code: Watching and Building @lang<shell>

# Begin watching the files and re-building whenever they change
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run auto-build

# Or if you do not want to watch and just build
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run build

_heading: Creating Browser-Ready Files

To create files for use directly in a browser, the distribution
files (located in ``packages/ethers/dist``) need to be built
which requires several intermediate builds, scripts and for
various rollup scripts to execute.

_code: Building Distribution Files @lang<shell>

# If you need to rebuild all the libs (esm + cjs) and dist files
# Note: this requires node 10 or newer
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run build-all

_heading: Testing

_code: Testing @lang<shell>

# Rebuilds all files (npm run build-all) and bundles testcases up for testing
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm test

# Often you don't need the full CI experience
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run test-node

_heading: Distribution

Most developers should not ever require this step, but for people
forking ethers and creating alternates (for example if you have
a non-EVM compatible chain but are trying to reuse this package).

This script will rebuild the entire ethers project, compare it
against npm, re-write package versions, update internal hashes,
re-write various TypeScript files (to get around some ES+TS
limitations for Tree Shaking and linking), re-write map files,
bundle stripped versions of dependencies and basically just a
whole bunch of stuff.

If you use this and get stuck, [message me](link-mail).

_code: Preparing the Distribution @lang<shell>

# Prepare all the distribution files
# - Remove all generated files (i.e. npm run clean)
# - Re-install all dependencies, hoisting, etc. (npm install)
# - Spell check all strings in every TypeScript files
# - Build everything from scratch with this clean install
# - Compare local with npm, bumping the version if changed
# - Build everything again (with the updated versions)
# - Update the CHANGELOG.md with the git history since the last change
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run update-version

_note: Do NOT check in dist files in a PR

For Pull Requests, please ONLY commit files in the ``docs.wrm/`` and
``packages/*/src.ts/`` folders. I will prepare the distribution builds
myself and keeping the PR relevant makes it easier to verify the changes.

_heading: Publishing

Again, this should not be necessary for most developers. This step
requires using the ``misc/admin/cmds/config-set`` script for a number
of values, including private keys, NPM session keys, AWS access keys,
GitHub API tokens, etc.

The config file is encrypted with about 30 seconds of scrypt password-based
key derivation function, so brute-forcing the file is quite expensive.

The config file also contains a plain-text mnemonic. This is a money-pot.
Place a tempting amount of ether or Bitcoin on this account and set up an
e-mail alert for this account.

If any attacker happens across your encrypted config, they will have instant
access to the plain-text mnemonic, so they have the option to immediately
steal the ether (i.e. the responsible-disclosure bond).

If you ever see this ether taken, your encrypted file is compromised! Rotate
all your AWS keys, NPM session keys, etc. immedately.

@TODO: document all the keys that need to be set for each step

_code: Preparing the Distribution @lang<shell>

# Publish
# - Update any changed packages to NPM
# - Create a release on GitHub with the latest CHANGELOG.md description
# - Upload the bundled files the the CDN
# - Flush the CDN edge caches
/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run publish-all


_subsection: Documentation @<contributing--documentation>

The documents are generated using [Flatworm](flatworm) documentation
generation tool, which was written for the purpose of writing the documentation
for ethers.

Style Guide (this section will have much more coming):

- Try to keep lines no longer than //around// 80 characters
- Avoid inline links in the source; use the ``externalLinks`` field in the config.js
- Prefix external links with ``link-``
- Changing an anchor name must be well justified, as it will break all existing links
  to that section; flatworm will support symlinks in the future
- In general, I aim for consistency; look to similar situations throughout the documentation


_heading: Building

To build the documentation, you should first follow the
[above steps](contributing--building) to build the ethers library.

Building the docs will generate several types of output:

- A full set of HTML pages, linking across each other
- A single one-page HTML page with all pages linking to local anchors
- A full set of README.md pages organized to be browsable and linkable in GitHub
- A metadata dump for tool ingestion (still needs more work)
- (@TODO; only half done) The documentation as a LaTeX and generated PDF

_code: Building the Documentations @lang<shell>

/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run build-docs


_heading: Evaluation

When building the documentation, all code samples are run through a JavaScript
VM to ensure there are no typos in the example code, as well the exact output
of results are injected into the output, so there is no need to keep the results
and code in-sync.

However, this can be a bit of a headache when making many small changes, so to
build the documentation faster, you can skip the evaluation step, which will
inject the code directly.

_code: Build docs skipping evaluation @lang<shell>

/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run build-docs -- --skip-eval


_heading: Previewing Changes

To preview the changes locally, you can use any standard web server and run
from the ``/docs/`` folder, or use the built-in web server.

The same caveats as normal web development apply, such flushing browser
caches after changing (and re-building) the docs.

_code: Running a webserver @lang<shell>

/home/ricmoo/ethers.js> npm run serve-docs