PR testing tutorial

This tutorial is up to date as of March 4, 2024

This tutorial will guide you through testing changes made in an open pull request in void-packages.

Prerequisites

• basic knowledge of Git
• basics of CLI

• Cloning
  • You don’t have a void-packages clone
    • You want to try out a singe PR and never touch void-packages again
    • You want to have void-packages for future use
  • You have a void-packages clone
    • gh
    • git
• Updating
• Setting up the builddir
• Building
• Installing
• Feedback

Cloning

The steps to follow differ depending on whether you already have a void-packages clone.

• You don’t have a void-packages clone
  • You want to try out a singe PR and never touch void-packages again
  • You want to have void-packages for future use
• You have a void-packages clone

You don’t have a void-packages clone

You want to try out a singe PR and never touch void-packages again

You should go to the pull request you want to test:

Click on the highlighted link. It will take you to the forked repository of the author of the pull request.

Press the Code button:

Copy the HTTPS or SSH link according to your preference (if you do not have one, choose HTTPS):

You should also know the name of the branch from the first picture. Here it’s mdBook-completions.

Now, clone the repo using a terminal:

# Replace these!                             vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
git clone --depth 1 --single-branch --branch=mdBook-completions https://github.com/meator/void-packages.git

You must replace the branch and the link with yours.

You can now continue with Setting up the builddir.

You want to have void-packages for future use

You can clone the repository with

git clone https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages.git
# or with SSH
#git clone git@github.com:void-linux/void-packages.git

This takes about 15 minutes and 626MiB on my laptop.

To speed this up, you can look at different ways of cloning. But the full clone should be preferred.

You can then continue with You have a void-packages clone.

You have a void-packages clone

There are two ways to check out a PR: with gh or with git.

gh

This method requires github-cli to be installed.

github-cli requires authentication to your GitHub account. If you aren’t authenticated, github-cli will show you instructions on how to authenticate.

You can check out the pull request by

gh pr checkout 48934

GitHub has a handy button for that:

gh may prompt you to set the default repository when first running it. You should select void-linux/void-packages.

git

You’ll have to figure out the pull request number. You can find it here:

The generic process looks like this¹:

git fetch upstream pull/<number>/head:<some branch name>
git checkout <some branch name>

I will showcase it on the pull request mentioned above.

You first have to add the upstream repo as a remote (if you don’t have it already):

git remote add upstream git@github.com:void-linux/void-packages.git
# Or with HTTPS:
#git remote add upstream https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages.git

Then you have to fetch the PR and check out to it. In the following sample, I’m cloning PR number 48934 to branch mdbook-compl:

git fetch upstream pull/48934/head:mdbook-compl
git checkout mdbook-compl

Updating

The pull request might be a bit out of date when compared to void-packages. This can result in problems. To update it, you must have the upstream remote. Your git remote -v should look like this (with the target fork instead of meator/void-packages.git):

origin	git@github.com:meator/void-packages.git (fetch)
origin	git@github.com:meator/void-packages.git (push)
upstream	git@github.com:void-linux/void-packages.git (fetch)
upstream	git@github.com:void-linux/void-packages.git (push)

or like this for HTTPS:

origin	https://github.com/meator/void-packages.git (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/meator/void-packages.git (push)
upstream	https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages.git (fetch)
upstream	https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages.git (push)

If you do not have the upstream entry, you must add it:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages.git
# Or with SSH
#git remote add upstream git@github.com:void-linux/void-packages.git

If you have the upstream entry, you can update the branch using it:

git pull --rebase upstream master

If merge conflicts arise, you’ll have to fix them or use the older version in the PR without updating it.

Setting up the builddir

Skip this if you have a builddir.

You can set up the builddir with

./xbps-src binary-bootstrap

This takes about two minutes on my laptop.

Building

You can build the package with

./xbps-src pkg <package>

here it would be

./xbps-src pkg mdBook

Installing

This requires the xtools package.

Run

sudo xi -f <package>

here it would be

sudo xi mdBook

And that’s it. If you don’t want to build any more packages, you can run

./xbps-pkg zap

to delete the masterdir. This can save up space.

If you only wanted to install the package and don’t care about void-packages any more, you can remove the clone now.

Feedback

You should comment on the original pull request and share your experiences with the package. If you have encountered any problems with it, you should report them.