Chapter 4

Development

This chapter contains information only needed for development and maintaining the theme.

Contributing

What to know if you want to contribute

Maintaining

What to know as a maintainer

Screenshots

Recipe to create various documentation screenshots

Subsections of Development

Contributing

Code Quality

A new release can happen at any time from the main branch of the GitHub project without further acknowledgment. This makes it necessary that, every pushed set of changesets into the main branch must be self-contained and correct, resulting in a releasable version.

Stay simple for the user by focusing on the mantra “convention over configuration”.

At installation the site should work reasonable without (m)any configuration.

Stay close to the Hugo way.

Don’t use npm or any preprocessing, our contributors may not be front-end developers.

Document new features in the exampleSite. This also contains entries to the What’s new page.

Don’t break existing features if you don’t have to.

Remove reported issue from the browser’s console.

Check for unnecessary whitespace and correct indention of your resulting HTML.

Conventional Commits

Write commit messages in the conventional commit format.

Following is an inpomplete list of some of the used conventional commit types. Be creative.

Common Feature Structure Shortcodes
build a11y favicon attachments
browser archetypes search badge
chore alias menu button
docs generator history children
shortcodes i18n scrollbar expand
theme mobile nav icon
print toc include
rss clipboard math
variant syntaxhighlight mermaid
boxes notice
openapi
piratify
siteparam
tabs

Maintaining

Semver

This project tries to follow the semver policy - although not followed 100% in the past.

Usually an entry of Breaking on the What’s new page causes a new major release number.

All other entries on the What’s new page will increase the minor release number.

Releases resulting in a new major or minor number are called main release.

Releases containing bugfixes only, are only increasing the patch release number. Those releases don’t result in announcements on the What’s new page.

Entries on the What’s new page are checked and enforced during the version-release GitHub Action.

Managing Issues

Issues are categorized and managed by assigning labels to it.

Once working on an issue, assign it to a fitting maintainer.

When done, close the ticket. Once an issue is closed, it needs to be assigned to next release milestone.

A once released ticket is not allowed to be reopened and rereleased in a different milestone. This would cause the changelog to be changed even for the milestone the issue was previously released in. Instead write a new ticket.

Managing Pull Requests

If a PR is merged and closed it needs an accompanied issue assigned to. If there is no issue for a PR, the maintainer needs to create one.

You can assign multiple PRs to one issue as long as they belong together.

Usually set the same labels and milestone for the PR as for the accompanied issue.

Labels

Kind

An issue that results in changesets must have exactly one of the following labels. This needs to be assigned latest before release.

Label Description Changelog section
documentation Improvements or additions to documentation -
discussion This issue was converted to a discussion -
task Maintenance work Maintenance
feature New feature or request Features
bug Something isn’t working Fixes

Impact

If the issue would cause a new main release due to semver semantics it needs one of the according labels and the matching badge on the What’s new page.

Label Description
change Introduces changes with existing installations
breaking Introduces breaking changes with existing installations

Declination

If an issue does not result in changesets but is closed anyways, it must have exactly one of the following labels.

Label Description
duplicate This issue or pull request already exists
invalid This doesn’t seem right
support Request for achieving a special goal
unresolved No progress on this issue
update A change in behavior after updat
wontchange This will not be worked on

Halt

You can assign one further label out of the following list to signal readers that development on an open issue is currently halted for different reasons.

Label Description
blocked Depends on other issue to be fixed first
idea A valuable idea that’s currently not worked on
undecided No decision was made yet
helpwanted Great idea, send in a PR
needsfeedback Further information is needed

3rd-Party

If the issue is not caused by a programming error in the themes own code, you can label the causing program or library.

Label Description
asciidoc This is a topic related to processing of AsciiDoc
browser This is a topic related to the browser but not the theme
device This is a topic related to a certain device
hugo This is a topic related to Hugo itself but not the theme
mermaid This is a topic related to Mermaid itself but not the theme

Making Releases

A release is based on a milestone named like the release itself - just the version number, eg: 1.2.3. It’s in the maintainers responsibility to check semver semantics of the milestone’s name prior to release and change it if necessary.

Making releases is automated by the version-release GitHub Action. It requires the version number of the milestone that should be released. The release will be created from the main branch of the repository.

Treat released milestones as immutable. Don’t rerelease an already released milestone. An already released milestone may already been consumed by your users.

During execution of the action a few things are checked. If a check fails the action fails, resulting in no new release. You can correct the errors afterwards and rerun the action.

The following checks will be enforced

  • the milestone exists
  • there is at least one closed issue assigned to the milestone
  • all assigned issues for this milestone are closed
  • if it’s a main release, there must be a new <major>.<minor> at the beginning of the What’s new page
  • if it’s a patch release, there must be the <major>.<minor> from the previous release at the beginning of the What’s new page

After a successful run of the action

  • the History page is updated, including release version, release date and text
  • the What’s new page is updated, including release version, release date and text
  • the version number for the <meta generator> is updated
  • the updated files are committed
  • the milestone is closed
  • the repository is tagged with the version number (eg. 1.2.3), the main version number (eg. 1.2.x) and the major version number (eg. 1.x)
  • a new entry in the GitHub release list with the according changelog will be created
  • the official documentation is built and deployed
  • the version number for the <meta generator> is updated to a temporary and committed (this helps to determine if users are running directly on the main branch or are using releases)
  • a new milestone for the next patch release is created (this can later be renamed to a main release if necessary)

Screenshots

Sometimes screenshots need to be redone. This page explains how to create the different screenshots, tools and settings

Common

Creation:

  • Use English translation
  • Empty search
  • Remove history checkmarks but leave it on the page thats used for the screenshot
  • After resize of the page into the required resolution, reload the page to have all scrollbars in default loading position

Demo Screenshot

Content:

A meaningful full-screen screenshot of an interesting page.

The content should be:

  • timeless: not showing any dates or often edited content
  • interesting: show a bunch of interesting elements like headings, code, etc
  • balanced: no cluttering with overpresent elements or coloring
  • aligned: aligned outlines

Used by:

Page URL: Screenshot Link

Creation:

  • save as images/screenshot.png
  • from original screenshot, scale to 900 x 600 and save as images/tn.png

Remarks:

The locations are mandatory due to Hugo’s theme site builder.

Preview images/screenshot.png:

Screenshot Screenshot

Preview images/tn.png:

tn tn

Hero Image

Content:

Show the Demo Screenshot page on different devices and different themes. Composition of the different device screenshots into a template.

The content should be:

  • consistent: always use the same page for all devices
  • pleasing: use a delightful background

Used by:

Page URL: Hero Image Link

Creation:

Preview images/hero.png:

Hero Hero