uutils-findutils/DEVELOPMENT.md

Setting up your local development environment

For contributing rules and best practices please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md

Before you start

For this guide we assume that you already have a GitHub account and have git and your favorite code editor or IDE installed and configured. Before you start working on findutils, please follow these steps:

1. Fork the findutils repository to your GitHub account. Tip: See this GitHub guide for more information on this step.
2. Clone that fork to your local development environment:

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-ACCOUNT/findutils
cd findutils

Tools

You will need the tools mentioned in this section to build and test your code changes locally. This section will explain how to install and configure these tools. We also have an extensive CI that uses these tools and will check your code before it can be merged. The next section Testing will explain how to run those checks locally to avoid waiting for the CI.

Rust toolchain

Install Rust

If you're using rustup to install and manage your Rust toolchains, clippy and rustfmt are usually already installed. If you are using one of the alternative methods, please make sure to install them manually. See following sub-sections for their usage: clippy rustfmt.

Tip You might also need to add 'llvm-tools' component if you are going to generate code coverage reports locally:

rustup component add llvm-tools-preview

pre-commit hooks

A configuration for pre-commit is provided in the repository. It allows automatically checking every git commit you make to ensure it compiles, and passes clippy and rustfmt without warnings.

To use the provided hook:

1. Install pre-commit
2. Run pre-commit install while in the repository directory

Your git commits will then automatically be checked. If a check fails, an error message will explain why, and your commit will be canceled. You can then make the suggested changes, and run git commit ... again.

NOTE: On MacOS the pre-commit hooks are currently broken. There are workarounds involving switching to unstable nightly Rust and components.

clippy

cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features

The msrv key in the clippy configuration file clippy.toml is used to disable lints pertaining to newer features by specifying the minimum supported Rust version (MSRV).

rustfmt

cargo fmt --all

cargo-deny

This project uses cargo-deny to detect duplicate dependencies, checks licenses, etc. To run it locally, first install it and then run with:

cargo deny --all-features check all

Markdown linter

We use markdownlint to lint the Markdown files in the repository.

Spell checker

We use cspell as spell checker for all files in the project. If you are using VS Code, you can install the code spell checker extension to enable spell checking within your editor. Otherwise, you can install cspell separately.

If you want to make the spell checker ignore a word, you can add

// spell-checker:ignore word_to_ignore

at the top of the file.

Testing

Just like with building, we follow the standard procedure for testing using Cargo:

cargo test

Code coverage report

Code coverage report can be generated using grcov.

Using Nightly Rust

To generate gcov-based coverage report

export CARGO_INCREMENTAL=0
export RUSTFLAGS="-Zprofile -Ccodegen-units=1 -Copt-level=0 -Clink-dead-code -Coverflow-checks=off -Zpanic_abort_tests -Cpanic=abort"
export RUSTDOCFLAGS="-Cpanic=abort"
cargo build <options...>
cargo test <options...>
grcov . -s . --binary-path ./target/debug/ -t html --branch --ignore-not-existing --ignore build.rs --excl-br-line "^\s*((debug_)?assert(_eq|_ne)?\#\[derive\()" -o ./target/debug/coverage/
# open target/debug/coverage/index.html in browser

if changes are not reflected in the report then run cargo clean and run the above commands.

Using Stable Rust

If you are using stable version of Rust that doesn't enable code coverage instrumentation by default then add -Z-Zinstrument-coverage flag to RUSTFLAGS env variable specified above.

Tips for setting up on Mac

C Compiler and linker

On MacOS you'll need to install C compiler & linker:

xcode-select --install

Tips for setting up on Windows

MSVC build tools

On Windows you'll need the MSVC build tools for Visual Studio 2013 or later.

If you are using rustup-init.exe to install Rust toolchain, it will guide you through the process of downloading and installing these prerequisites.

Otherwise please follow this guide.