komorebi/docs/linux/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to the Project

The project is a collection of contributions from both the project leaders and community members. There are many ways to contribute, this can include content in the project repositories, as well as contributing in public and private conversation, assisting users, writing blog posts, and many other ways.

How contributions are made

Contributions to the project primarily happen in the project source repositories, but may also occur in other places, such as discussion forums and public and private discourse.

Contributing content to the Project

In order for the project leaders to manage sustained progress toward the project goals and maintain project velocity, focus and quality, the project may adjust the license terms over time.

Content contributed to the project must therefore be provided under sufficiently liberal terms to allow these operations to proceed unimpeded. As such contributions are accepted with the following understanding:

• Contributed content is licensed under the terms of the 0-BSD license
• Contributors accept the terms of the project license at the time of contribution

By making a contribution, you accept both the current project license terms, and that all contributions that you have made are provided under the terms of the 0-BSD license.

Working on the code

nix develop (or direnv, through the .envrc) provides the Rust toolchain, a nightly rustfmt and the tools the checks use. rustfmt.toml uses an unstable option, which is why the formatter is a nightly one.

just check runs everything a change has to pass before it is pushed: the formatting check, clippy with warnings denied, the tests, rustdoc with warnings denied, the checks of the bridge, and just lint: the macros the code does not use, and actionlint (with shellcheck) over the workflows. just fmt formats the Rust sources, and nix fmt every file type the repository has. nix flake check builds the same checks, plus cargo deny, as derivations; on Linux it also boots every VM test, which needs KVM.

The bridge

bridge.js, the script komorebi loads into KWin, is JavaScript that KWin runs as it is: there is no package.json and no build step. Its types are JSDoc comments, which tsc checks against kwin-api.d.ts, the part of KWin's scripting API the bridge uses; something the bridge starts to use is declared there first. Its tests, bridge.test.js, run under node --test against a fake KWin. just check-js runs both, with the tsc and node of the dev shell.

The messages between the bridge and the daemon are in komorebi-linux/src/kwin/fixtures, which the tests of both sides read. A change to a message changes the fixture, the bridge and the daemon in the same commit.

The NixOS module

nix/linux/nixos-module.nix is services.komorebi, which the flake exports as nixosModules.default with its overlay. A change to it comes with a scenario in nix/linux/tests/nixos-module.nix, the nixos-module-eval check: each scenario is a real NixOS system that is evaluated and never built, and its checks read the assertions, the unit and the options it evaluates to. It runs on a Mac too, with nix build .#legacyPackages.aarch64-darwin.heavyChecks.linux-nixos-module-eval. A change to what the unit does in a session also changes the VM suite module, which logs in to Plasma on a machine with the module and checks the daemon the unit runs. Every other VM suite runs on machines built with the module too.

Three files are generated from the Rust types and committed: schemas/linux/schema.json and schemas/linux/schema.asc.json (just jsonschema), and nix/linux/komorebi-options.nix, which types the module's config (just nixgen, which needs schemars-nixgen, cargo install schemars-nixgen). A change to what komorebi.json or an applications.json can say regenerates them in the same commit, and the check schema-fresh fails when it does not. The first line of the options file is the hash of the schema it was made from, which is how the check tells without running schemars-nixgen.

A change to what komorebic hotkeys compile prints for a key binding file shows in keybindings-fixtures, which compares its output for every file of the fixture corpus with nix/linux/tests/keybindings.expected: write the file again with the loop in nix/linux/tests/keybindings.nix, and read the difference before committing it.

nix/linux/supported-kwin.nix has the oldest KWin komorebi supports, min, and the newest one every VM suite has passed against, testedMax, which the module checks a system's KWin against. testedMax is raised by hand, once every suite has passed against a newer KWin: in the weekly canary job, or on a branch whose flake.lock has it. The commit changes testedMax and the dated comment above it (the date, the nixpkgs revision and the KWin), and its message says which run that was and which suites ran. nix eval --raw --file nix/linux/supported-kwin.nix testedMax reads it without the flake. min changes with the code, in the commit that starts to use something an older KWin does not have.

The comparison

docs/linux/dev/COMPARE.md compares komorebi for KDE with komorebi for Windows and komorebi for Mac, and its tables are generated by scripts/linux/compare-gen.py (Python 3 and nothing else) from this checkout and from checkouts of the other two. The script is stale: it was written when komorebi for KDE lived in komorebi-for-kde/ of a repository next to komorebi-for-mac/, and it looks for the other two trees there (or in ~/komorebi and ~/komorebi-for-mac). Since the consolidation they are komorebi-windows/ and komorebi-macos/ of this repository, and the script and COMPARE.md have not been made again. Continuous integration has no checkouts, so it does not run the script. A change to a komorebic command, a SocketMessage, a key of komorebi.json, a WindowManagerEvent, a method of Backend or a list of keys in check.rs is followed by python3 -I scripts/linux/compare-gen.py --check docs/linux/dev/COMPARE.md, and by --update when it reports a stale block, in the same commit. The script stops and says what when a command, key, event or method has no note about why it differs, and when a sentence of the document stops being true; the text around an updated block is read again each time.

VM tests

A change that needs a real KWin to be checked comes with a VM test, next to the Rust test that covers the same behavior against the fake desktop. docs/linux/dev/vm-tests.md says how they are laid out, how to run one (just vm NAME) and how to add one.

The KWin effects

The patches in nix change the KWin effects komorebi drives. Each one is a derivative work of its effect, which is under the GNU General Public License version 3, and is under the same license. A patch starts with a header that describes the change and carries the license notice; patch skips the text before the first diff line. To change a patch, make the change in the effect's source at the version the package pins, and write the whole diff again with diff -ruN a b below the header. The check of each package, named after it (in nix/linux/tests/effects.nix), builds the package and checks the files it installs, and for a patched package that the patch is in them:

nix build .#checks.x86_64-linux.linux-kde-rounded-corners-komorebi-install
nix build .#checks.x86_64-linux.linux-kwin-effect-geometry-change-komorebi-install

Plasma guests to develop in

nix/linux/dev has NixOS guests with Plasma for trying a change by hand, on an Apple silicon Mac (two that QEMU runs and a disk image for UTM) and on a Linux machine with KVM (the same two QEMU guests, for x86_64 and for aarch64, and a demo guest, nix/linux/dev/run-kde.nix). docs/linux/dev/utm.md says how to build and run them, and what a builder has to be for a Mac. They install komorebi with the NixOS module, and carry nothing of the person who uses them: a key, a password or a configuration of yours goes into the guest when it runs, never into these files. The plasma-guests-eval check evaluates them, the VM suite rdp runs their RDP server, nix/linux/dev/krdp.nix, and the VM suite run-kde boots the demo guest. The demo guest has no password and no key in its closure: the host shares a directory with them, and run-kde (scripts/linux/run-kde) starts it. The script is shellchecked when the package is built, and run-kde-dry-run and run-kde-doctor compare what it prints for made-up machines with the texts in nix/linux/tests/run-kde: change one with the other.

Continuous integration

ci.yaml runs on every pull request and on every push to master, feature/* and hotfix/*, in this repository only. The lint job builds every check that needs no virtual machine and runs just lint, cargo-deny checks licenses and advisories, and the VM tests run on KVM in two jobs: vm-fast on every pull request and vm-slow on master, every week, and on pull requests labeled ci:vm-slow. A weekly workflow opens a pull request that moves flake.lock, and the same jobs run on it.

The flake follows the tip of nixpkgs-unstable, so KWin and Plasma change whenever flake.lock moves. The canary job of ci.yaml runs every week, and when the workflow is started by hand: it runs nix flake update nixpkgs in a copy of the checkout and builds every check against the result, the VM suites of both tiers included. When a check fails, it opens an issue titled "Canary: a check fails against the tip of nixpkgs-unstable" with the failed checks, the nixpkgs revision and its KWin version, or comments on that issue if it is still open. The job changes nothing in the repository. To reproduce a failure, run nix flake update nixpkgs in a checkout and build the check the issue names (just vm NAME for a VM suite). The fix goes in a commit of its own; nixpkgs is not pinned back.

Releases

A release is a tag. Set version in komorebi-linux/Cargo.toml (which the flake reads) to the new version, commit it, and push the tag vVERSION on that commit. For every run, the build job of ci.yaml builds komorebi and komorebic with nix on an x86_64 and an arm64 runner, and keeps them as an artifact of the run for 14 days. On a tag, once lint, vm-fast and build have passed, the publish job makes the GitHub release of that tag with:

• komorebi-VERSION-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.zip and komorebi-VERSION-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.zip, each with the two binaries;
• checksums.txt, the SHA-256 sum of every other file of the release;
• schemas/linux/schema.json, the schema of komorebi.json, when the repository has one;
• release notes that kokai writes from the commit messages since the previous version tag.

The scheduled run on master every week, and a run of the workflow started by hand on master, replace the nightly prerelease the same way: nightly takes the place of the version in the file names, and the notes list the commits since the last version tag. The arm64 job may fail without failing the run; the release then has no arm64 zip.

nix builds a binary that loads glibc from the nix store, so the build job points each binary at the system's dynamic loader, at the standard path for its architecture, with no library path, and runs it on the Ubuntu runner to check that it starts. A release binary therefore uses the glibc of the system it runs on.

Commits

Commit messages follow the Conventional Commits specification: type(scope): description. The scope is the Rust module the change is in (wm, kwin, layouts), repo for repository files and markdown, nix for the flake and github for workflows. Every line of a message, the header included, is at most 80 columns, and the body says why the change is made.

Documentation lands in the commit that changes the behavior it describes, not in a later one. A change to a komorebic subcommand regenerates its page in docs/linux/cli with just docgen.

Zero-Clause BSD

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for  
any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL  
WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES  
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE  
FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY  
DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN  
AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT  
OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.