Contributing to the Qt Port of WebKit

Checking out the sources

Developers who wish to contribute to the port can check out the sources like so: ​Gitorious.org is hosting a ​public git repository of the QtWebKit port.

git clone git://gitorious.org/webkit/webkit.git

• Gitorious.org is experiencing a few hiccups lately. Prefer to clone it via ssh, as explained in this post: ​QtWebKit Developer Journal: fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

This is a git mirror of the WebKit SVN repository.

If you also want to track the staging branches for QtWebKit releases, do:

cd webkit
git remote add qtwebkit git://gitorious.org/webkit/qtwebkit.git
git fetch qtwebkit

This repository has the QtWebKit staging branches and other branches specific to the QtWebKit port.

To see the remote branches you just fetched do:

git branch -r

For the tags simply do:

git tag

And to switch to a branch or a tag simply use git checkout

Submitting a patch

When using a git repository to access the sources, the steps to submit a patch are roughly as follows. Please see the WebKit project's page about ​contributing for more information.

• Make your changes;
• Add a ​layout test;
• If you are using Git to create patches, read UsingGitWithWebKit#WebKitScriptsupportforGit;
• Use the Tools/Scripts/webkit-patch script to automate the patch submission (e.g.: Tools/Scripts/webkit-patch upload--request-commit);
• See the section below for instructions on how to fill the changelogs;
• OR
  • Run the Tools/Scripts/check-webkit-style script;
  • Create a bug for the issue you're fixing: ​http://webkit.org/new-qtwebkit-bug
  • Run the Tools/Scripts/prepare-ChangeLog script to create an entry for your changes in each relevant ChangeLog file. Check --help;
  • Edit the ChangeLog files reported by the prepare-ChangeLog script (see section below);
  • Do a git diff > patchname.patch to create your patch (use --cached if you first did a git add to put your changes in the git index). For detailed help, see UsingGitWithWebKit;
  • Attach the patch to the bug report, set the review flag to '?' and the commit-queue flag to '?';
• Wait for review/approval. :)

Notes on ChangeLogs

• WebKit has changelog files inside each project module;
• Use Tools/Scripts/prepare-ChangeLog or Tools/Scripts/webkit-patch to fill the basics;
• Changelogs have a short description (usually the bug title), the bug URL, an extra line and an optional detailed description.
• The short description should be preceeded with "[Qt]" if the patch is specific to the Qt port of WebKit.
• Keep the "Reviewed by NOBODY (OOPS!)." line in the ChangeLog files, it will be edited by the bot or person that commits your fix.

Hacking on QtWebKit

All commits to QtWebKit are required to follow the ​WebKit coding style. That includes qwebview(.h|cpp), qwebpage(.h|.cpp) and all others.

• QtWebKit overview
• Process of contribution to QtWebKit's API

Information on Git for QtWebKit developers

• Using Git with WebKit
• ​A Git cheat sheet
• ​An excellent article on Git for computer scientists

Communication

We use the regular webkit-dev mailing and IRC channels list to coordinate:

• ​webkit-qt Mailing List
• ​webkit-dev Mailing List
• IRC: #qtwebkit at freenode
• IRC: #webkit at freenode

Running the tests

See also:

• QtWebKitTesting
• ​QtWebKit Builder and Tester Virtual Machine (will save you from a lot of trouble)

Dependencies

You will need to install the following packages to run the layout tests:

• Curl
• Ruby 1.8 or greater
• Apache 2
• libapache2-mod-php5 (i.e. the PHP 5 Apache 2 module)

For your convenience, below are the commands needed to install these dependencies on popular linux distributions:

Ubuntu:

sudo aptitude install curl ruby apache2 libapache2-mod-php5

Fedora:

sudo yum install curl ruby httpd mod_ssl mod_php

Installing the layout test fonts/Using run-webkit-tests

To run the tests the normal WebKit layout test infrastructure is used. In addition you need a fixed set of fonts for testing. You can download them using Git from Gitorious:

git clone git://gitorious.org/qtwebkit/testfonts.git

Then you have to set the WEBKIT_TESTFONTS variable to point to the newly checked-out testfonts directory.

As the last step you can just run

run-webkit-tests

from the Tools/Scripts directory.

Individual tests can be run just directly using for example

run-webkit-tests LayoutTests/fast/forms/plaintext-mode-1.html

For debugging at test it may also be useful to run it directly in DumpRenderTree (with gdb):

WebKitBuild/Debug/bin/DumpRenderTree -v LayoutTests/fast/forms/plaintext-mode-1.html

The expected output can usually be found in the file with the same name as the test itself but with the .expected extension.

Building API Docs

Before you can build the API docs you need make sure to have Qt build from sources and run make docs in your Qt build directory once. This will ensure that the Qt API documentation is built and can be referenced from the QtWebKit docs and it will also ensure that qdoc (the tool that generates the API docs) is built.

To build the QtWebKit API docs simply run make docs in your build directory, i.e. WebKitBuild/Release. The output will be generated in HTML in the doc/html subdirectory.

Obtaining Check-In Privileges

Contributors with a proven track record of good patch submissions and that have demonstrated an ability to work well with the community can obtain check-in privileges to the QtWebKit git repository.

The various branches of the git repository mirror the branches in the ​upstream public webkit svn repository. Patches that land on a branch in the git repository are not automatically pushed to the svn repository. Patches intended for the svn repository must first be reviewed and then committed by developers with ​sufficient privileges.

Patches that are not specific to the QtWebKit port of the webkit project should not be submitted to the git repository rather they should be contributed directly to the upstream public webkit svn repository.

To obtain check in privileges to the git repository the contributor should inquire from one of the Administrator(s) of the ​qtwebkit-developers team.

Attic

• TODO List