Gerrit Polymer Frontend

Follow the setup instructions for Gerrit backend developers where applicable, the most important command is:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://gerrit.googlesource.com/gerrit

The --recurse-submodules option is needed on git clone to ensure that the core plugins, which are included as git submodules, are also cloned.

Installing Bazel

Follow the instructions here to get and install Bazel.

Installing Node.js and npm packages

Note: Switch between an old branch with bower_components and a new branch with ui-npm packages (or vice versa) can lead to some build errors. To avoid such errors clean up the build repository:

rm -rf node_modules/ \
    polygerrit-ui/node_modules/ \
    polygerrit-ui/app/node_modules \
    tools/node_tools/node_modules

bazel clean

If it doesn't help also try to run

bazel clean --expunge

The minimum nodejs version supported is 8.x+

# Debian experimental
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo apt-get install npm

# OS X with Homebrew
brew install node
brew install npm

All other platforms: download from nodejs.org.

or use nvm - Node Version Manager.

Additional packages

We have several bazel commands to install packages we may need for FE development.

For first time users to get the local server up, npm start should be enough and will take care of all of them for you.

# Install packages from root-level packages.json
bazel fetch @npm//:node_modules

# Install packages from polygerrit-ui/app/packages.json
bazel fetch @ui_npm//:node_modules

# Install packages from polygerrit-ui/packages.json
bazel fetch @ui_dev_npm//:node_modules

# Install packages from tools/node_tools/packages.json
bazel fetch @tools_npm//:node_modules

More information for installing and using nodejs rules can be found here https://bazelbuild.github.io/rules_nodejs/install.html

Serving files locally

Go server

To test the local Polymer frontend against production data or a local test site execute:

./polygerrit-ui/run-server.sh

// or
npm run start

These commands start the simple hand-written Go webserver. Mostly it just switches between serving files locally and proxying the real server based on the file name. It also does some basic response rewriting, e.g. it patches the config/server/info response with plugin information provided on the command line:

./polygerrit-ui/run-server.sh --plugins=plugins/my_plugin/static/my_plugin.js,plugins/my_plugin/static/my_plugin.html

If any issues occured, please refer to the Troubleshooting section at the bottom or contact the team!

Running locally against production data

Local website

Start Go server and then visit http://localhost:8081

The biggest draw back of this method is that you cannot log in, so cannot test scenarios that require it.

Chrome extension: Gerrit FE Dev Helper

To be able to bypass the auth and also help improve the productivity of Gerrit FE developers, we created this chrome extension: Gerrit FE Dev Helper.

It basically works as a proxy that will block / redirect requests from current sites to any given url base on certain rules.

The source code is in Gerrit - gerrit-fe-dev-helper, contributions are welcomed!

To use this extension, just follow its readme here.

Running locally against a Gerrit test site

Set up a local test site once:

Build Gerrit
Set up a local test site.
Optionally populate your test site with some test data.

For running a locally built Gerrit war against your test instance use this command.

If you want to serve the Polymer frontend directly from the sources in polygerrit_ui/app/ instead of from the war:

Start Go server
Add the --dev-cdn option:

$(bazel info output_base)/external/local_jdk/bin/java \
    -DsourceRoot=$(bazel info workspace) \
    -jar bazel-bin/gerrit.war daemon \
    -d $GERRIT_SITE \
    --console-log \
    --dev-cdn http://localhost:8081

NOTE You can use any other cdn here, for example: https://cdn.googlesource.com/polygerrit_ui/678.0

Running Tests

For daily development you typically only want to run and debug individual tests. Run the local Go proxy server and navigate for example to http://localhost:8081/elements/shared/gr-account-entry/gr-account-entry_test.html. Check “Disable cache” in the “Network” tab of Chrome's dev tools, so code changes are picked up on “reload”.

Our CI integration ensures that all tests are run when you upload a change to Gerrit, but you can also run all tests locally in headless mode:

npm test

To allow the tests to run in Safari:

In the Advanced preferences tab, check “Show Develop menu in menu bar”.
In the Develop menu, enable the “Allow Remote Automation” option.

To run Chrome tests in headless mode:

WCT_HEADLESS_MODE=1 WCT_ARGS='--verbose -l chrome' ./polygerrit-ui/app/run_test.sh

Style guide

We follow the Google JavaScript Style Guide with a few exceptions. When in doubt, remain consistent with the code around you.

In addition, we encourage the use of ESLint. It is available as a command line utility, as well as a plugin for most editors and IDEs.

eslint-config-google is a port of the Google JS Style Guide to an ESLint config module, and eslint-plugin-html allows ESLint to lint scripts inside HTML. We have an .eslintrc.json config file in the polygerrit-ui/ directory configured to enforce the preferred style of the PolyGerrit project. After installing, you can use eslint on any new file you create. In addition, you can supply the --fix flag to apply some suggested fixes for simple style issues. If you modify JS inside of <script> tags, like for test suites, you may have to supply the --ext .html flag.

Some useful commands:

To run ESLint on the whole app, less some dependency code:

npm run eslint

To run ESLint on just the subdirectory you modified:

node_modules/eslint/bin/eslint.js --ext .html,.js polygerrit-ui/app/$YOUR_DIR_HERE

To run the linter on all of your local changes:

git diff --name-only HEAD | xargs node_modules/eslint/bin/eslint.js --ext .html,.js

We also use the polylint tool to lint use of Polymer. To install polylint, execute the following command.

To run polylint, execute the following command.

bazel test //polygerrit-ui/app:polylint_test

npm run polylint

Template Type Safety

Warning: This feature is temporary disabled, because it doesn't work with Polymer 2 and Polymer 3. Some of the checks are made by polymer linter.

Polymer elements are not type checked against the element definition, making it trivial to break the display when refactoring or moving code. We now run additional tests to help ensure that template types are checked.

A few notes to ensure that these tests pass

Any functions with optional parameters will need closure annotations.
Any Polymer parameters that are nullable or can be multiple types (other than the one explicitly delared) will need type annotations.

These tests require the typescript and fried-twinkie npm packages.

To run on all files, execute the following command:

./polygerrit-ui/app/run_template_test.sh

npm run test-template

To run on a specific top level directory (ex: change-list)

TEMPLATE_NO_DEFAULT=true ./polygerrit-ui/app/run_template_test.sh //polygerrit-ui/app:template_test_change-list

To run on a specific file (ex: gr-change-list-view), execute the following command:

TEMPLATE_NO_DEFAULT=true ./polygerrit-ui/app/run_template_test.sh //polygerrit-ui/app:template_test_<TOP_LEVEL_DIRECTORY> --test_arg=<VIEW_NAME>

TEMPLATE_NO_DEFAULT=true ./polygerrit-ui/app/run_template_test.sh //polygerrit-ui/app:template_test_change-list --test_arg=gr-change-list-view

Contributing

Our users report bugs / feature requests related to the UI through Monorail Issues - PolyGerrit.

If you want to help, feel free to grab one from those New issues without assignees and send us a change.

If you don't know who to assign to review your code change, you can use this special account: gerrit-fe-reviewers@api-project-164060093628.iam.gserviceaccount.com and just assign to that account, it will automatically pick two volunteers from the queue we have for FE reviewers.

If you are willing to join the queue and help the community review changes, you can create an issue through Monorail and request to join the queue! We will review your request and start from there.

Troubleshotting & Frequently asked questions

Local host is blank page and console shows missing files from polymer-bridges

Its likely you missed the polymer-bridges submodule when you clone the gerrit repo.

To fix that, run:

// fetch the submodule
git submodule update --init --recursive

// reset the workspace (please save your local changes before running this command)
npm run clean

// install all dependencies and start the server
npm start