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Contributing to the cardano-node project

The cardano-node development is primarily based on the Nix infrastructure (https://nixos.org/ ), which enables packaging, CI, development environments and deployments.

On how to set up Nix for cardano-node development, please see Building Cardano Node with nix.

Roles and Responsibilities

We maintain a [CODEOWNERS file][CODEOWNERS] which provides information who should review a contributing PR. Note that you might need to get approvals from all code owners (even though GitHub doesn't give a way to enforce it).

[CODEOWNERS]: https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-node/blob/master//CODEOWNERS

Supplementary tooling

GHCID

run ghcid with: ghcid -c "cabal repl exe:cardano-node --reorder-goals"

Testing

cardano-node is essentially a container which implements several components such networking, consensus, and storage. These components have individual test coverage. The node goes through integration and release testing by Devops/QA while automated CLI tests are ongoing alongside development.

Developers on cardano-node can launch their own testnets or run the chairman tests locally.

Debugging

Pretty printing CBOR encoded files

It may be useful to print the on chain representations of blocks, delegation certificates, txs and update proposals. There are two commands that do this (for any cbor encoded file):

To pretty print as CBOR: cabal exec cardano-cli -- pretty-print-cbor --filepath CBOREncodedFile

Validate CBOR files

You can validate Byron era blocks, delegation certificates, txs and update proposals with the validate-cbor command.

cabal exec cardano-cli -- validate-cbor --byron-block 21600 --filepath CBOREncodedByronBlockFile

Updating dependencies

... from Hackage

Updating package dependencies from Hackage should work like normal in a Haskell project. The most important thing to note is that we pin the index-state of the Hackage package index in cabal.project. This means that cabal will always see Hackage “as if” it was that time, ensuring reproducibility. But it also means that if you need a package version that was released after that time, you need to bump the index-state (and to run cabal update locally).

Because of how we use Nix to manage our Haskell build, whenever you do this you will also need to pull in the Nix equivalent of the newer index-state. You can do this by running nix flake lock --update-input hackageNix.

... from the Cardano package repository

Many Cardano packages are not on Hackage and are instead in the Cardano package repository, see the README for (lots) more information. Getting new packages from there works much like getting them from Hackage. The differences are that it has an independent index-state, and that there is a different Nix command you need to run afterwards: nix flake lock --update-input CHaP.

Using unreleased versions of dependencies

Sometimes we need to use an unreleased version of one of our dependencies, either to fix an issue in a package that is not under our control, or to experiment with a pre-release version of one of our own packages. You can use a source-repository-package stanza to pull in the unreleased version. Try only to do this for a short time, as it does not play very well with tooling, and will interfere with the ability to release the node itself.

For packages that we do not control, we can end up in a situation where we have a fork that looks like it will be long-lived or permanent (e.g. the maintainer is unresponsive, or the change has been merged but not released). In that case, release a patched version to the Cardano package repository, which allows us to remove the source-repository-package stanza. See the README for instructions.

Releasing a version of the node

(There is much more to say here, this is just a small fragment)

... to the Cardano package repository

When releasing a new version of the node, it and the other packages in this repository should be released to the Cardano package repository. See the README for instructions, including a script to automate most of the process. Please note that libraries need bounds on the version of their dependencies to avoid bitrot and be effectively reusable.

Workbench: a local cluster playground

You can quickly spin up a local cluster (on Linux and Darwin), based on any of a wide variety of configurations, and put it under a transaction generation workload -- using the workbench environment:

  1. Optional: choose a workbench profile:
    • default stands for a light-state, 6-node cluster, under saturation workload, indefinite runtime
    • ci-test is the profile run in the node CI -- very light, just two nodes and short runtime
    • devops is an unloaded profile (no transaction generation) with short slots -- 0.2 sec.
    • ..and many more -- which can be either:
  2. Optional: select mode of operation, by optionally providing a suffix:
    • default -- no suffix -- just enter the workbench shell, allowing you to run start-cluster at any time. Binaries will be built locally, by cabal.
    • autostay suffix -- enter the workbench shell, start the cluster, and stay in the shell afterwards. Binaries will be built locally, by cabal.
    • autonix suffix -- enter the workbench shell, start the cluster. All binaries will be provided by the Nix CI.
    • ..there are other modes, as per lib.mk
  3. Enter the workbench shell for the chosen profile & mode:
    make <PROFILE-NAME> or make <PROFILE-NAME>-<SUFFIX> (when there is a suffix).
  4. Optional: start cluster:
    Depending on the chosen mode, your cluster might already start, or you are expected to start it yourself, using start-cluster.

The workbench services are available only inside the workbench shell.

Using Cabal

By default, all binaries originating in the cardano-node repository are available to cabal build and cabal run, unless the workbench was entered using one of the pure *nix modes. Note that in all cases, the dependencies for the workbench are supplied through Nix and have been built/tested on CI.

Dependency localisation -or- Cabal&Nix for painless cross-repository work

The Cabal workflow described above only extends to the repository-local packages. Therefore, ordinarily, to work on cardano-node dependencies in the context of the node itself, one needs to go through an expensive multi-step process -- with committing, pushing and re-pinning of the dependency changes.

The dependency localisation workflow allows us to pick a subset of leaf dependencies of the cardano-node repository, and declare them local -- so they can be iterated upon using the cabal build / cabal run of cardano-node itself. This cuts development iteration time dramatically and enables effective cross-repo development of the full stack of Cardano packages.

Without further ado (NOTE: the order of steps is important!):

  1. Ensure that your cardano-node checkout is clean, with no local modifications. Also, ensure that you start outside the node's Nix shell.

  2. Check out the repository with the dependencies, beside the cardano-node checkout. You have to check out the git revision of the dependency used by your cardano-node checkout -- as listed in cardano-node/cabal.project.
    • we'll assume the ouroboros-network repository
    • ..so a certain parent directory will include checkouts of both ouroboros-network and cardano-node, at the same level
    • ..and the git revision checked out in ouroboros-network will match the version of the ouroboros-network packages used currently
    • Extra point #1: you can localise/check out several dependency repositories
    • Extra point #2: for the dependencies that are not listed in cabal.project of the node -- how do you determine the version to check out? You can ask the workbench shell:
      1. Temporarily enter the workbench shell
      2. Look for the package version in ghc-pkg list
      3. Use that version to determine the git revision of the dependency's repository (using a tag or some special knowledge about the version management of said dependency).

  3. Enter the workbench shell, as per instructions in previous sections -- or just a plain Nix shell.

  4. Ensure you can build cardano-node with Cabal: cabal build exe:cardano-node. If you can't something else is wrong.

  5. Determine the leaf dependency set you will have to work on. The leaf dependency set is defined to include the target package you want to modify, and its reverse dependencies -- that is, packages that depend on it (inside the dependency repository).

    • let's assume, for example, that you want to modify ouroboros-consensus-shelley

    • ouroboros-consensus-shelley is not a leaf dependency in itself, since ouroboros-consensus-cardano (of the same ouroboros-network repository) depends on it -- so the leaf dependency set will include both of them.

    • you might find out that you have to include a significant fraction of packages in ouroboros-network into this leaf dependency set -- do not despair.

    • if the leaf dependency set is hard to determine, you can use cabal-plan -- which is included in the workbench shell (which you, therefore, have to enter temporarily):
      [nix-shell:~/cardano-node]$ cabal-plan dot-png --revdep ouroboros-consensus-shelley

      This command will produce a HUGE deps.png file, which will contain the entire chart of the project dependencies. The important part to look for will be the subset of packages highlighted in red -- those, which belong to the ouroboros-network repository. This will be the full leaf dependency set.

  6. Edit the cardano-node/cabal.project as follows:
    • for the leaf dependency set in the very beginning of the cabal.project, add their relative paths to the packages: section, e.g.:
      packages:
    ...
    trace-resources
    trace-forward
    ../ouroboros-network/ouroboros-consensus-shelley
    ../ouroboros-network/ouroboros-consensus-cardano

  7. The two packages have now become local -- when you try cabal build exe:cardano-node now, you'll see that Cabal starts to build these dependencies you just localised. Hacking time!

Hoogle

The workbench shell provides hoogle, with a local database for the full set of dependencies:

[nix-shell:~/cardano-node]$ hoogle search TxId
Byron.Spec.Ledger.UTxO newtype TxId
Byron.Spec.Ledger.UTxO TxId :: Hash -> TxId
Cardano.Chain.UTxO type TxId = Hash Tx
Cardano.Ledger.TxIn newtype TxId crypto
Cardano.Ledger.TxIn TxId :: SafeHash crypto EraIndependentTxBody -> TxId crypto
Cardano.Ledger.Shelley.API.Types newtype TxId crypto
Cardano.Ledger.Shelley.API.Types TxId :: SafeHash crypto EraIndependentTxBody -> TxId crypto
Cardano.Ledger.Shelley.Tx newtype TxId crypto
Cardano.Ledger.Shelley.Tx TxId :: SafeHash crypto EraIndependentTxBody -> TxId crypto
Ouroboros.Consensus.HardFork.Combinator data family TxId tx :: Type
-- plus more results not shown, pass --count=20 to see more