The project best practices task force intends to gather existing project guidelines and best practices in one central place, and identify gaps that may be addressed in parallel or future task forces.
The expected output is a centrally located reference document to make project maintainers and contributors aware of the universe of project related guidelines and best practices, and the various resources available to them for further learning and adoption.
This wiki page is intended for initial brainstorming and collaboration. Eventually the task force output will be published at https://toc.hyperledger.org/ and follow-on targeted task forces may be proposed.
Maintainers guidelines includes guidance around:
MAINTAINERS.md with active and emeritus maintainers
Maintainer responsibilities
Becoming a maintainer
Removing a maintainer, see also inactivity policy
Common Repository Structure includes guidance around required repository files such as:
README.md
CONTRIBUTING.md
LICENSE
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
SECURITY.md
CHANGELOG.md
MAINTAINERS.md
NOTICE
License headers on all source files
Build files
CI and test files
No executable binaries
Inclusive naming includes guidance around:
Switching 'master' to 'main' branch
Inclusive naming conventions
Inclusive language statement
Project Incubation Exit Criteria includes guidance applicable to any Incubation or Graduated project:
Legal - Apache 2 license
Community support - Active and diverse contributors, plus see Community section below
Test coverage - Automated unit and integration test suites
Documentation - plus see Documentation section below
Infrastructure - plus see Common Repository Structure and Community sections
Security - plus see Security section below
OpenSSF Best Practices Badge - https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en
- NOTE - As the TOC comes to consensus on more best practices, we could add those to Project Incubation Exit Criteria.
Project Governance
RFC process for driving consensus and agreement on project decisions, features, design, etc. Examples:
https://github.com/hyperledger/sawtooth-rfcs (same process in Ursa, Grid)
https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-rfcs (evolution of sawtooth RFC process)
Team structure, decision making - example https://github.com/hyperledger/sawtooth-rfcs/blob/main/text/0006-sawtooth-governance.md
Community
Mailing lists - perhaps one targeted for users and another targeted for contributors/maintainers?
Discord Chat - important to strike a balance between too few and too many chat channels
Public meetings - regular cadence
Pull Requests - quick review turnarounds are appreciated
Contributing docs - examples:
- NOTE - Perhaps common "contributing" content can be aggregated so that each project doesn't re-invent.
Security - add link to security task force
Named security contacts per project (at least two)
Security issue reporting process defined in SECURITY.md
Security issue disclosure process - see task force https://github.com/hyperledger/toc/issues/48
Leverage automated scans
linters
Software Composition Analysis dependency scans, e.g. Dependabot, Govulncheck (depends on language)
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) aka static analysis scans, e.g. CodeQL, Snyk
Keep dependencies up to date (e.g. Dependabot)
Security audits for Graduated project major releases
Review and obtain OpenSSF Best Practices Badge - criteria
Security Artifact Signing - proposed task force - https://github.com/hyperledger/toc/issues/49
Documentation - add link to Documentation and Onboarding task forces
User guide including Getting Started / Tutorial
Developer guide including coding guidelines, build instructions, test instructions
Application developer guide
- Recommended documentation platform?
Releases
Follow an established Release taxonomy - either SemVer or CalVer
Document release strategy, release process, branch strategy
Document Long-term support (LTS) release strategy - example https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-rfcs/blob/main/text/0005-lts-release-strategy.md
- Use Github actions to automate release process, e.g. publish artifacts and release notes upon drafting a release
Release artifacts - attached to GitHub release, docker images in GitHub Packages versus Dockerhub
CI
GitHub Actions recommended
Pull request checks
DCO
Unit tests
Integration tests
- Scans - see Security section, more comprehensive scans can be run nightly instead
Test coverage reporting
See Automated Pipelines task force - https://github.com/hyperledger/toc/issues/44
GitHub
Use .github/settings.yml so that repository settings can be managed and tracked via pull requests
Recommended initial repository settings, e.g. Repository options, Branch protection rules
Rebase merging is preferred over Merge commits and Squash merging to keep commit history clean (assuming contributors squash/amend their own pull requests)
Although there are often multiple paths to achieve an outcome in git and GitHub, there is value in defining a suggested path, both for the benefit of new GitHub users, and for the sake of project consistency.
Examples - amending commits versus squashing commits, Mergifyio to simplify cherry picks and backports.
Example guidance - https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest/github/github.html