I have always struggled with how packages are versioned and published to the npm registry.
My main concern is that you probably want to also add a git tag to your source code when you are releasing a new version, but npm packages have their own versioning system, and include a &quot;version&quot; field in the package.json
Because of this, most of the workflows I have seen, usually involve:
<ol>
<li>Running <code>npm version ...</code>. This will update the &quot;version&quot; field in the package.json file.</li>
<li>Publishing the package to the npm registry, using the version set in previous step.</li>
<li>Committing to git, so that we track the change in package.json file.</li>
<li>Adding a git tag.</li>
<li>Pushing to git remote to track new commit and new tag.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
Steps 3 and 4 are frequently done automatically as part of <code>npm version</code>.
</blockquote>
For me this flow has two main problems:
<ul>
<li>
My personal preference is that everything is driven by git tags, making them the single source of truth.
This would allow to just have one manual step -&gt; <code>git tag -a v1.0.0 -m &quot;...&quot; &amp;&amp; git push origin --tags</code>. Then, this would trigger a number of potential automations, including publishing to the npm registry, but also others like creating a release with the appropriate release notes, building release artifacts, etc.
</li>
<li>
The &quot;version&quot; field in the package.json file can very easily become outdated, if you git-tag by mistake before publishing the package, or if pushing the changes fails after <code>npm version ...</code> has been run.
I&#x27;ve seen this happening more often than it seems.
</li>
</ul>
Because of this, my current take when publishing npm packages for my personal projects is:
<ol>
<li>
Get rid of the &quot;version&quot; field from the package.json file. It&#x27;s misleading in source code, as it can very easily be out of date.
The only case where it&#x27;s useful is when the package has been installed and is inside node_modules, as other packages will assume this field to exist and have the right value on it.
In this case it&#x27;s always going to be correct due to the<code>npm version ...</code> + <code>npm publish</code> tandem (see next point).
</li>
<li>
Creating the git tag is the only &quot;manual step&quot;. This triggers an automation running <code>npm version ${GIT_TAG} --git-tag-version=false &amp;&amp; npm publish</code> (this is simplified. You probably also need to build your project and other potential extra steps).
The version to publish is inferred from the git tag (<code>${GIT_TAG}</code> is just a placeholder), and only at this stage we will set the &quot;version&quot; inside package.json, just before the package is published.
</li>
<li>
Other automations that need to happen during releases, can be also triggered now, like publishing release notes, building artifacts, etc.
</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
As an example, you can see <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/shlinkio/github-actions/blob/24de7a2b89a9eb11b0acfd184de7187698b051b6/.github/workflows/js-lib-publish.yml">this GitHub actions workflow</a>, which follows this approach.
</blockquote>

I have always struggled with how packages are versioned and published to the npm registry. My main concern is that you probably want to also add a git tag to your source code when you are releasing a new version, but npm packages have their own versioning system, and include a "version" field in…

My current take when publishing packages to the npm registry

A couple of weeks ago I migrated a React project using redux to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/">Redux Toolkit</a>.
Redux has always been my preferred state management tool for React (which doesn&#x27;t mean I &quot;love&quot; it), but one of its main problems is the amount of boilerplate code it requires.
Because of that I had a couple of helper functions, but there was still some things not properly handled, like proper type inference on reducers and actions (I use TypeScript).
A bit by accident (I think it was on Twitter), I found out about Redux Toolkit (RTK from now on), an official library from the redux team, which provides some opinionated helpers to reduce the amount of boilerplate, and I decided to give it a chance.
These are my impressions.
<h3>TL;DR</h3>
I first started to use it in a proof of concept, and I quickly loved it.
RTK does not &quot;replace&quot; any of the redux principles, so you can progressively adopt it, by replacing small bits of code. My plan was to use it just for some reducers, but I liked it so much that I ended up migrating the whole project in a series of consecutive pull requests.
<h3>A bit of context</h3>
Before the migration, I used to follow the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/erikras/ducks-modular-redux">ducks modular pattern</a>, which promotes putting all your action types, action creators and the reducer handling those actions on the same module.
This fits pretty well with RTK, as in most of the cases you will use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createSlice">slices</a>, and end up exporting the reducer and action creators returned by it, from the same module.
If you use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createAsyncThunk">async thunks</a>, they usually need to be used by that same slice, so it&#x27;s not a bad idea to export them also from there.
<h3>Why I love it</h3>
There are a couple of reasons for which I loved RTK right away. The main one is that they make an impressive work on making type inference in TypeScript work properly.
<ul>
<li>Slices detect the type of the initial state in order to know what is expected to be passed as <code>state</code> to reducers.</li>
<li>You can infer the type of your store from what is generated by <code>configureStore</code> or <code>combineReducers</code> functions, allowing you to also properly type the <code>dispatch</code> function.</li>
<li>Action creators are generated with the proper param types based on the reducers provided to <code>createSlice</code> or the callback provided to <code>createAsyncThunk</code>.</li>
<li><code>createSlice</code> can consume all the action creators generated by <code>createAsyncThunk</code>, and infer the proper payload for each one of them.</li>
</ul>
Thanks to this, the code is super predictable and potential bugs can be caught sooner.
<blockquote>
More details on how to use RTK with typescript https://redux-toolkit.js.org/usage/usage-with-typescript
</blockquote>
But this is not the only benefit. Other reasons that make it very nice to work with are:
<ul>
<li>It keeps the same concepts from Redux, but removing the boilerplate or your own helper functions if you have them (yes, I didn&#x27;t want to keep all those <code>switch</code> statements everywhere).</li>
<li>It is mostly transparent for the components dispatching the actions or consuming the state.</li>
<li>All the tests covering your reducers/actions/components should keep passing, as the outcome from RTK is the same as if you built everything manually.</li>
<li>It introduces a couple of extra helpers, like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/rtk-query/overview">RTK query</a> or the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createListenerMiddleware">listener middleware</a>, which is very useful to dispatch actions as a result of other actions being dispatched.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Challenges I found</h3>
Of course, adopting a new tool always comes with some challenges.
The main &quot;problem&quot; I found is that RTK is a bit opinionated, but that&#x27;s precisely how they manage to reduce boilerplate code, and it&#x27;s also &quot;advertised&quot; in their website, so not a big surprise.
I usually prefer to be in control of everything (configuration over convention), but that&#x27;s just a personal preference, and sometimes it&#x27;s ok to accept a bit of magic for the sake of simplicity.
This caused the next challenges for my particular case:
<ul>
<li>
RTK assumes your project follows a strict <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux.js.org/tutorials/fundamentals/part-7-standard-patterns#flux-standard-actions">Flux pattern</a>, meaning your actions always have the properties <code>type</code>, <code>payload</code> and optionally <code>meta</code> and <code>error</code>.
I was not following this pattern (my actions had the payload &quot;mixed&quot; on the first object level), so I had to adapt all my actions first, fix the tests, then migrate the reducer to RTK and make sure the tests kept passing.
<div></div>
</li>
<li>
Immutability is no longer promoted in reducers. Instead, the library requires <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://immerjs.github.io/immer/">immer</a> internally, and using proxies they automatically ensure immutability, even if you &quot;mutate&quot; the state.
This feels a bit counterintuitive at first, because redux always promoted an immutable approach, and the use of immer is not obvious.
However, they have <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/usage/immer-reducers#why-immer-is-built-in">good reasons</a> to do it, and if your reducers return a state object, you can still use the immutable approach. It&#x27;s up to you.
<div></div>
</li>
<li>
Action creators resulting of <code>createAsyncThunk</code> can only have one argument.
This is because the async thunk callback receives a second argument containing the <code>dispatch</code> and <code>getState</code> functions, as well as a couple of other goodies, enforcing this convention to avoid human errors.
<div></div>
</li>
<li>
You cannot dispatch other actions after the callback passed to <code>createAsyncThunk</code>, because it has to return the payload and RTK dispatches the action for you.
However, this is probably something you usually should not be doing, and in my case, I resolved it with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createListenerMiddleware">listener middleware</a>, listening for the second action in order to dispatch the second one.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
My conclusion is that RTK is definitely worth it if you use redux.
It makes code simpler, more predictable and better typed. However, it still requires knowing how redux works internally and what are its patterns, in order to understand why the library exposes the helpers it exposes and why.
For existing redux projects, you can migrate progressively, addressing the challenges bit by bit and not all at once, which simplifies its adoption.
For new projects in which you want to use redux, I would recommend starting right away with RTK.

A couple of weeks ago I migrated a React project using redux to Redux Toolkit. Redux has always been my preferred state management tool for React (which doesn't mean I "love" it), but one of its main problems is the amount of boilerplate code it requires.

Because of that I had a couple of helper…

My experience migrating to Redux Toolkit (RTK)

In 2019, GitHub published their own solution to run automated workflows called GitHub Actions, which allowed those hosting their code in GitHub, to be able to define and run their CI/CD pipelines in the same platform. When it was released, one of the main pain points to use it was that defining…

How to reduce duplication in your GitHub Actions workflows

Recently ReactJS v18 was released. I started to look into its improvements, and checked which of my projects could benefit from them.
The main react-based project I maintain at the moment of writing this article is <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/shlinkio/shlink-web-client">shlink-web-client</a>, so I naturally created a new branch and started the process.
The update was quite smooth, as most of the other dependencies I was using from the react ecosystem were already updated to support v18. All but one, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://enzymejs.github.io/enzyme/">enzyme</a>, the testing framework I was using to unit-test react components.
To be precise, I was able to continue running my tests, but some of them (those using <code>mount</code> instead of <code>shallow</code>) were still rendering components with the &quot;old&quot; React v17 approach, causing them to behave as in that version and a warning being printed in the console.
<h3>First fix attempt</h3>
The way enzyme integrates with the react version you are using is through an adapter library. The last official one supports only React v16, but someone released an <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/wojtekmaj/enzyme-adapter-react-17">unofficial adapter for v17</a> which, with close to 650k weekly downloads, quickly became the way to go.
I checked if there was one for React 18, but sadly there wasn&#x27;t.
Also, the author of the adapter for v17 posted an article indicating <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://dev.to/wojtekmaj/enzyme-is-dead-now-what-ekl">enzyme is dead</a>, he was not going to release one for v18, and publishing one for v17 was a mistake.
With those facts in mind, I started to face what was probably going to be the moment to migrate to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://testing-library.com/docs/react-testing-library/intro">react testing library</a>.
<h3>Migration strategy</h3>
I decided to follow a migration strategy similar to the one suggested in the article above, but with a couple of modifications:
<ul>
<li>I update to React 18 anyway, as tests still pass.</li>
<li>Migrate right away all tests using <code>mount</code>, as those are the ones behaving differently.</li>
<li>New tests should be written directly with react testing library (RTL from now on).</li>
<li>When an existing test needs to be changed, consider migrating it to RTL, and do it if there&#x27;s time.</li>
<li>Introduce some PR from time to time just migrating a handful of tests.</li>
<li>Once everything is migrated, get rid of everything related with enzyme.</li>
</ul>
<h3>First contact and impressions</h3>
I was a bit sceptical with RTL, as it was focused more on integration tests, instead of unit tests, which meant I had to completely change the mindset to write tests.
It also didn&#x27;t support shallow rendering, meaning that you will end up sometimes rendering a bigger component tree when testing container-like components, potentially causing side effects that could affect your test.
On the other hand there&#x27;s more and more people stating that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kentcdodds.com/blog/why-i-never-use-shallow-rendering">shallow rendering is an anti-pattern</a>, and that&#x27;s probably the reason of enzyme getting &quot;discontinued&quot;.
Also, RTL has become the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://reactjs.org/docs/testing.html#tools">officially recommended framework</a> to test react components, it has become very popular, and it has even joined a wider group of testing libraries under the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://testing-library.com/"><code>@testing-library</code></a> organization.
The thing is that I started to use it, and I was quickly surprised with how it felt to work with it, and all the benefits it was bringing to my tests.
<h3>Benefits I have experienced</h3>
Once I started migrating the first tests I noticed some benefits:
<ul>
<li>Changing my mindset was actually easier than I thought. The docs are very well written, so it&#x27;s relatively easy to start using RTL.</li>
<li>My tests got simpler, and required less of those nasty global mocks that jest allows (I&#x27;m looking at you, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://jestjs.io/es-ES/docs/mock-functions#mocking-modules"><code>jest.mock</code></a>).</li>
<li>Tests were way less coupled with implementation details. I moved from testing the component props, to test what the user would see on the screen.</li>
<li>Related with previous point, I started to write my tests by looking at the screen instead of the component&#x27;s implementation.</li>
<li>Changes in source code led to fewer tests requiring to be changed.</li>
<li>A progressive migration was possible, where some tests still use enzyme and others are already using RTL.</li>
</ul>
And overall, it felt good and I have already dedicated a couple of PRs just to migrate more tests.
<h3>Challenges I faced</h3>
But of course, migrating to a new tool always comes with its own challenges, and this was not an exception. I&#x27;ll explain the main ones I have faced so far and how I tackled them:
<ul>
<li>
RTL lets you do some things in a couple of different ways, and the docs may not be super clear about what&#x27;s the recommended option.
For this I recommend reading <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acel.me/DCMb1">this article</a> from Kent C. Dodds, RTL&#x27;s author, which explains some common mistakes when using the library.
</li>
<li>
At first, I struggled a bit with asynchronous side effects and state changes in components, which can easily end up printing a warning like <code>Warning: An update to MyComponent inside a test was not wrapped in act</code>.
The warning also explains how you are supposed to solve this by wrapping your code in <code>act()</code>, but this warning comes from React, not RTL, and what it is not telling you is that RTL already wraps all needed operations in <code>act()</code>.
What this error usually mean is that you are not waiting for something to happen. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acel.me/jnUdT">This other article</a>, also from Kent C. Dodds, explains everything you need to know about the things that can lead to this warning, and how to solve them.
</li>
<li>
Since you start testing from the user point of view, some use cases can be challenging to test without coupling with implementation details. For example, when you have a component which dynamically renders different images or icons, I used to directly check the component properties.
For this I found the best solution was to use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://jestjs.io/docs/snapshot-testing">jest snapshots</a>. I didn&#x27;t want to manually check which SVG was being rendered in the DOM, just that different ones were being used in every case.
<pre class="language-tsx"><code class="language-tsx">// I went from this...
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const wrapper = shallow(&lt;MyComp dynamicValue=&quot;foo&quot; /&gt;);
 expect(wrapper.find(FontAwesomeIcon).prop(&#x27;icon&#x27;)).toEqual(someIcon);
})

// To this
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const { container } = render(&lt;MyComp dynamicValue=&quot;foo&quot; /&gt;);
 expect(container.firstChild).toMatchSnapshot();
})
</code></pre>
</li>
<li>
Something very similar happens if you use some library that renders canvas. There&#x27;s no way to test that from a DOM point of view, which is what RTL does.
In my case I was using <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.chartjs.org/">Chart.js</a> to render some charts, so I used <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/hustcc/jest-canvas-mock">jest-canvas-mock</a>, which exposes a method on the canvas to see which are all the events invoked from the library.
Then I used snapshots again to verify they had the expected &quot;shape&quot;.
<pre class="language-tsx"><code class="language-tsx">// I went from this...
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const wrapper = shallow(&lt;MyCompWithCanvas /&gt;);
 expect(wrapper.find(Chart).prop(&#x27;data&#x27;).datasets).toEqual(...);
})

// To this
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const { container } = render(&lt;MyCompWithCanvas /&gt;);
 const events = container.querySelector(&#x27;canvas&#x27;)?.getContext(&#x27;2d&#x27;)?.__getEvents();

 expect(events).toBeTruthy();
 expect(events).toMatchSnapshot();
})
</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
For better or worst, enzyme should no longer be considered an option. If you are starting a new project or are using it on small ones, consider migrating to RTL as soon as possible.
If you are using it in bigger projects, following the process described in this article will probably help you.
In any case, you will get surprised. React testing library is a great tool and provides many benefits over enzyme.
Its main issue is that it&#x27;s not a drop-in replacement for enzyme, so you will have to change a bit your mindset.

Recently ReactJS v18 was released. I started to look into its improvements, and checked which of my projects could benefit from them. The main react-based project I maintain at the moment of writing this article is shlink-web-client, so I naturally created a new branch and started the process.

The…

My experience migrating from enzyme to react testing library

Capturing code coverage for a test suite is a very useful way to know which parts of your source code are actually getting executed by tests. This is useful not only to know if you need to add more tests to your project (in case the coverage is too low), but also, if you want to apply technics like…

Capturing remote code coverage in API tests with PHPUnit

Two days ago I released the first major version in almost 2 years for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/shlinkio/shlink-web-client">shlink-web-client</a>, a web UI for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://shlink.io">shlink</a>, my self-hosted URL shortener.
This new version introduces several improvements to the project, and I thought it was worth writing a post to explain all of them in depth.
<h3>New design</h3>
The project has been using the same design almost since the beginning. It was clean, but it laked a bit of contrast and consistency in many sections.
Now the main background is light-gray, with components composed in white cards with a slight box shadow, that makes them easier to spot inside the app.
Also, the main area has now a max-width that prevents components from stretching too much on wide screens.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="Before" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/design-before.png" class="gallery-item"/>Before</div><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="After" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/design-after.png" class="gallery-item"/>After</div></div>
<h3>Overview page</h3>
Up until now, after connecting to a Shlink server, you went directly to the list of short URLs.
With this new version, you now see an overview page first, which displays some general stats, a quick short URL creation form, and the latest 5 short URLs.
From there, you can navigate to the full list of short URLs, with filtering capabilities, or go to the advanced short URL creation form.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 "><img alt="Overview" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/overview.png" class="gallery-item"/>Overview</div></div>
<h3>Improved short URL creation form</h3>
One of the sections with more room for improvement was the short URL creation form. It had all the inputs mixed, displaying just the &quot;long url&quot; one, with the option to un-collapsing the rest at will.
The new design groups the inputs by context, which makes it more clear. It also displays the inputs all the time, since the &quot;quick form&quot; is now located in the overview page.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="Before" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/creation-form-before.png" class="gallery-item"/>Before</div><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="After" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/creation-form-after.png" class="gallery-item"/>After</div></div>
<h3>Enhanced visits page</h3>
The visits page had a problem, it was trying to display too much information in a single place.
<ul>
<li>Visits over time</li>
<li>Visits from every platform</li>
<li>Visits from every location</li>
<li>A list of visits as a table</li>
</ul>
The new approach splits those in subsections with their own sub-route each (<code>/by-location</code>, <code>/by-context</code>, etc). This helps to render a smaller amount of charts at once, since they are a bit CPU greedy.
Also, only the visits from the last 30 days are loaded by default, making it load way faster for URLs with a lot of visits.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="Before" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/visits-before.png" class="gallery-item"/>Before</div><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="After" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/visits-after.png" class="gallery-item"/>After</div></div>
<h3>Outer sections</h3>
The app has some sections which are not related to a specific server, like creating/editing servers, or the settings page.
These sections have also been adapted to the new style, and they also have a max-width for wide screens.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="Before" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/create-server-before.png" class="gallery-item"/>Before</div><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="After" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/create-server-after.png" class="gallery-item"/>After</div></div>
<h3>Date range selector</h3>
A new component allows selecting date ranges either by relative time ranges (last 30 days, last 90 days...) or by selecting absolute start and end dates.
This component is used to filter both short URL lists and visits lists.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-6 col-md-offset-3"><img alt="Date range selector" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/date-range-selector.png" class=""/>Date range selector</div></div>
<h3>Domain selector</h3>
Shlink has had multi-domain support for some versions, but changing the domain from the web client required to set the value manually, which is a bit error-prone.
This version introduces a new component which allows selecting from domains already used in the past (which is what you will want in most of the cases), preventing accidental typos.
It also allows setting new values in case you want to use a new domain that you never used before. This domain will then appear in the list the next time.
<div class="row"><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="Existing domains" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/domains-existing.png" class=""/>Existing domains</div><div class="col-md-6 "><img alt="New domain" src="/assets/img/shlink-web-client-3/domains-new.png" class=""/>New domain</div></div>
<h3>Other improvements</h3>
The changes described so far were the major ones. However, v3.0.0 includes a few other minor improvements.
<ul>
<li>Result and loading messages have been standardized: They are now more consistent and use the same set of components, which also ensures consistency in the future.</li>
<li>Error messages are now more descriptive: Instead of showing generic error messages when API calls fail, the actual error message is now always displayed, so that it&#x27;s easier to know what failed.</li>
<li>Dropped support for Shlink v1: All major versions come with some breaking changes that improve code maintainability. This one drops Shlink v1 support, which allows removing some conditional paths here and there.</li>
</ul>
Other than the last point, Shlink v3.0.0 is mostly backwards compatible, so it&#x27;s safe to upgrade if you are already using Shlink v2.x
<h3>Next steps</h3>
Of course this doesn&#x27;t end here, and I have a lot of ideas to improve it even further.
<ul>
<li>Dark theme: It&#x27;s what the cool kids do these days, and I have already done some experiments around it.</li>
<li>Shlink dashboard: Next gen web app for Shlink. You can read the whole reasoning in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/shlinkio/shlink-web-client/issues/338">this issue</a>.</li>
<li>Filtering in lists added to URL: Many sections allow filtering lists, but the state is saved in memory, which means it gets lost if the page is refreshed, and it cannot be bookmarked. The intention is to make all filtering params to become part of the URL.</li>
<li>Exporting visits in CSV: It&#x27;s cool to see charts full of info, but sometimes admins need to feed other services with the data, and consuming the original API is not always an option. Exporting visits to a CSV file will be supported soon by shlink-web-client.</li>
</ul>

Two days ago I released the first major version in almost 2 years for shlink-web-client, a web UI for shlink, my self-hosted URL shortener. This new version introduces several improvements to the project, and I thought it was worth writing a post to explain all of them in depth.

New design

The…

Released shlink-web-client v3.0.0

I&#x27;ve been wanting to write this article for a while, but it is a subject complex to approach.
Lately I&#x27;ve had some &quot;conflicts&quot; with users in some of the open source software (OSS) projects I maintain, and I have also seen some of the people I follow on Twitter dealing with the same.
Because of that I wanted to share my point of view on what should be the attitude and considerations when using OSS.
<h3>Company vs personal</h3>
The first thing you have to take into account when using OSS, is that there are two kinds of projects which usually have different goals.
<h4>Company projects</h4>
It is very common that companies which activity is related with software or make a deep use of technology, publish their own OSS projects.
These projects are usually born from some need the company has had which is not strictly part of their domain.
Thanks to publishing these projects they can find new talent (among contributors), or position themselves in the industry.
It&#x27;s also quite common that companies provide paid services which are related with these OSS projects, like specific hostings or deployment services, or just consultancy on using them.
<h4>Personal projects</h4>
There&#x27;s also projects which are usually maintained by one person, or a very small team, during their own free time.
These projects are created by people who do it mainly because they love to program and want to share something they have done.
The goal here is to get some visibility, show some skills, learn something new and contribute to the open source community.
While the main purpose is not usually getting money, they frequently accept donations and sponsorships.
<hr/>
Now we know the two main groups of OSS projects. Sometimes we think they are the same, but company projects are usually maintained by people which is paid by a company, and do it during their working hours.
On the other hand, personal projects cannot get that much attention and resources, so they cannot progress as fast as the company ones.
<h3>Considerations</h3>
That said, when we want to use an open source project or contribute to it, there are a few things to take into account.
<h4>Always be polite</h4>
While using a project, you will probably end up finding something is not working as you expected, or you&#x27;ll develop a new need for which the project does not provide a solution.
When reporting bugs or asking for new features, always try to be polite. Provide as many details as possible, be descriptive and help maintainers reproduce the issue.
If you are asked to do some tests and get back with the result, try to find the time to do it. You may think that&#x27;s not your work, but the issue will get solved much earlier and you will avoid frustrations.
There&#x27;s a formula I like to use when reporting issues, which consists in filling this template:
<ul>
<li>I did [action].</li>
<li>I expected [behavior] to happen.</li>
<li>Instead [other_behavior] happened.</li>
</ul>
This will simplify maintainers see the user&#x27;s intention, and detect confusions which are not actually bugs. Helping the user use the tool will be easier this way.
<h4>Don&#x27;t take anything for granted</h4>
Just because you open a ticket, does not mean the team is going to work on it right away. There are several reasons that could delay it.
<ul>
<li>The project has other priorities.</li>
<li>It&#x27;s hard to reproduce.</li>
<li>There&#x27;s no one available to work on it.</li>
<li>Maintainers just want to spend their time in something else (specially in the case of personal projects).</li>
</ul>
The people working in the project is usually dealing with a much wider scope than you might think, so you have to be patient and understand this.
It could also happen that they don&#x27;t really want to maintain what you proposed, even though it&#x27;s a supper critical feature for you, but a project will never be able to cover the 100% of use cases.
<h4>Consider contributing</h4>
One of the main principles of the open source philosophy is collaboration.
If you have been using an OSS project, the best way to show some appreciation and collaborate with its continuity is by contributing to it.
There are several ways to contribute.
<ul>
<li>You could improve the documentation,</li>
<li>You could provide some PR fixing some bug or improving the code.</li>
<li>You could provide some PR with some new feature.</li>
<li>You could make some economic donation or sponsorship.</li>
</ul>
The last one is very rare, specially among individual users, but if your company is taking advantage of an OSS project, you should consider it.
For the other three cases, if there&#x27;s something you think you can help with, there&#x27;s something to take into account in relation with previous point. You should always ask first.
Maybe someone is already working on something similar, or the team has some ideas in mind that could be shared before starting any implementation, or, as I said before, maybe they just don&#x27;t want to maintain it.
If you ask first you will save yourself some time and frustrations.
<h4>Follow the project rules</h4>
All projects have rules, and I&#x27;m talking about any kind of rule. How to write issues, the code of conduct, the coding standards, the amount of people that need to approve a PR before merging it...
You have to always follow these rules. Don&#x27;t try to enforce something just because you consider it better.
If the project requires the use of spaces for indentation but you used tabs because you like them better, don&#x27;t get mad if maintainers don&#x27;t want to merge your PR.
<h4>Don&#x27;t take it personally</h4>
And finally, because of the reasons exposed in previous points, there will be decisions you don&#x27;t like.
Don&#x27;t take it personally, because it&#x27;s not in most of the cases.
Your issue could be closed because you didn&#x27;t follow the issue template, or because they asked you to check something and you didn&#x27;t give any feedback after some days.
Understand this can happen, and you can always be polite and open a discussion, but never get mad and accuse the team to be unfair or treat you in the wrong way.
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
This article describes a set of rules that should help people using OSS projects and people maintaining them to understand each other, but focusing on the former.
I will try to write something similar but focusing on how maintainers should behave. We obviously forget some times that there&#x27;s people trusting on us when using the software we write.

I've been wanting to write this article for a while, but it is a subject complex to approach. Lately I've had some "conflicts" with users in some of the open source software (OSS) projects I maintain, and I have also seen some of the people I follow on Twitter dealing with the same.

Because of that…

Alejandro Celaya | Blog

Software development, agile methodologies and open source software.

category Archive — "oss"

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