Contributing To PyFarm

Summary

PyFarm is a Python based project with the goal of creating an easy to use and deploy render farm. The project is written on top of several existing libraries including SQLAlchemy, Flask, Twisted, and many more. While PyFarm’s original goal is providing the base for running a render farm it can be used for other types of work as well.

As flexible and easy to use as the project may be, contributions from the community are always welcome. There are many ways one can contribute to the overall project but generally they fall under either documentation, bug fixes, features, or testing. With that in mind, if you’re looking to contribute to any of these three areas then read on to get started.

Developer Resources

Below are some resources which are for developers wishing to contribute to PyFarm.

• Coding Style
  • Whitespace
    • Tabs and Spaces
  • Basic Syntax Considerations
    • Quotations
    • Standard Documentation
    • Endpoint Documentation
    • Line Continuations
  • HTTP Endpoints
    • URL Formatting
    • Validating Data in API Endpoints
  • Logging
    • General
    • Usage
      • Log Formatting
      • Use %r For Objects Instead of repr()
  • Exceptions and Errors
    • Suppressing All Exceptions
    • Custom Exceptions
    • Throwing Exceptions Inside A Request
      • Default Method
      • Alternate Method
  • Platform Specific Code
    • Import Handling
    • Internal Logic Handling
  • Supporting Multiple Python Versions
    • Checking Python Versions
    • Type Information
    • 2.x vs. 3.x Version Specific Python Imports
    • Backwards Compatible Imports

Project Structure

Sub-Projects

The project is broken down into several smaller sub-projects to aid in long term maintenance and isolation of code scope. Generally speaking there are two kinds of sub-projects, supporting and operational. Supporting sub-projects support all consumers of the project in some capacity (ex. documentation or deployment tools). Operations sub-projects contain the code which operate PyFarm (ex. agent or master). See the below table to get familiar with the various sub-projects as they will be referenced later on:

Sub-Projects of PyFarm

Sub-Project	Type	Description
pyfarm-docs	Supporting	source code to documentation in restructured text form pushes to this repository will: build docs at https://readthedocs.org/builds/pyfarm/
pyfarm-core	Operations	common library used by all other operational type sub-projects containing standard library backports, enums, basic file handling, base logger, general utilities, and system information collection setup.py does not specify all dependencies, the consuming sub-project will do this instead (ex. pyfarm-agent specifies the dependencies that the system information library needs) pushes to this repository will: build at https://travis-ci.org/pyfarm/pyfarm-core collect coverage at https://coveralls.io/r/pyfarm/pyfarm-core
pyfarm-agent	Operations	contains the code which runs on a remote host which can run jobs, update the master on a host’s resources, and track progress of individual commands pushes to this repository will: build at https://travis-ci.org/pyfarm/pyfarm-agent collect coverage at https://coveralls.io/r/pyfarm/pyfarm-agent code which wraps around an individual command to provide handling for failures, log emissions, and other conditionals related to job execution
pyfarm-master	Operations	contains the code which runs the web ui which serves as an administrative interface contains the database models which store and retrieve data from the database defines and hosts the REST api pushes to this repository will: build at https://travis-ci.org/pyfarm/pyfarm-master collect coverage at https://coveralls.io/r/pyfarm/pyfarm-master