Developer Guide

This guide will walk you through the process of making your first commit and how to effectively get it merged upstream.

Getting Started
Contribute

To get started, let’s ensure you have completed the following prerequisites for contributing to project Antrea:

Read and observe the code of conduct.
Check out the for the Antrea architecture and design.
Set up necessary accounts.

Now that you’re setup, skip ahead to learn how to .

At minimum, you need the following accounts for effective participation:

Slack: Join the and look for our #antrea channel.
Google Group: Join our .

There are multiple ways in which you can contribute, either by contributing code in the form of new features or bug-fixes or non-code contributions like helping with code reviews, triaging of bugs, documentation updates, filing or writing blogs/manuals etc.

In order to help you get your hands “dirty”, there is a list of starter issues from which you can choose.

Git Client Hooks

There are a few recommended git client hooks which we advise you to use. You can find them here: hack/git_client_side_hooks. You can run to copy them to your local .git/hooks/ folder, and remove them via make uninstall-hooks

GitHub Workflow

Developers work in their own forked copy of the repository and when ready, submit pull requests to have their changes considered and merged into the project’s repository.

Fork your own copy of the repository to your GitHub account by clicking on Fork button on Antrea’s GitHub repository.
Clone the forked repository on your local setup.

Add a remote upstream to track upstream Antrea repository.
```
git remote add upstream https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea
```
Never push to upstream remote
```
git remote set-url --push upstream no_push
```
Create a topic branch.
```
git checkout -b branchName
```
Make changes and commit it locally. Make sure that your commit is .

Keeping branch in sync with upstream.

git checkout branchName
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/main

Push local branch to your forked repository.
```
git push -f $remoteBranchName branchName
```
Create a Pull request on GitHub. Visit your fork at https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea and click Compare & Pull Request button next to your remoteBranchName branch.

Getting reviewers

To make it easier for reviewers to review your PR, consider the following:

Follow the golang and check out this document for common comments we made during reviews and suggestions for fixing them.
Format your code with make golangci-fix; if the flag an issue that cannot be fixed automatically, an error message will be displayed so you can address the issue.
Follow git commit guidelines.
Follow guidelines.
Please refer to Conventions for Writing Documentation for spelling conventions when writing documentation or commenting code.

If your PR fixes a bug or implements a new feature, add the appropriate test cases to our to guarantee enough coverage. A PR that makes significant code changes without contributing new test cases will be flagged by reviewers and will not be accepted.

It is a requirement to get your PR verified with CI checks before it gets merged. Also, it helps to find possible bugs before the review work starts. Once you create a PR, or you push new commits, CI checks at the bottom of a PR page will be refreshed. Checks include Github Action ones and Jenkins ones. Github Action ones will be triggered automatically when you push to the head branch of the PR but Jenkins ones need to be triggered manually with comments. Please note that if you are a first-time contributor, the Github workflows need approval from someone with write access to the repo. It’s a Github security mechanism.

Here are the trigger phrases for individual checks:

/test-e2e: Linux IPv4 e2e tests
/test-conformance: Linux IPv4 conformance tests
/test-networkpolicy: Linux IPv4 networkpolicy tests
/test-all-features-conformance: Linux IPv4 conformance tests with all features enabled
/test-windows-e2e: Windows IPv4 e2e tests
/test-windows-conformance: Windows IPv4 conformance tests
/test-windows-networkpolicy: Windows IPv4 networkpolicy tests
/test-windows-proxyall-e2e: Windows IPv4 e2e tests with proxyAll enabled
: Linux dual stack e2e tests
/test-ipv6-conformance: Linux dual stack conformance tests
/test-ipv6-networkpolicy: dLinux ual stack networkpolicy tests
/test-ipv6-only-e2e: Linux IPv6 only e2e tests
/test-ipv6-only-conformance: Linux IPv6 only conformance tests
/test-ipv6-only-networkpolicy: Linux IPv6 only networkpolicy tests
/test-flexible-ipam-e2e: Flexible IPAM e2e tests
/test-multicast-e2e: Multicast e2e tests

Here are the trigger phrases for groups of checks:

/test-windows-all: Windows IPv4 tests, including e2e tests with proxyAll enabled
/test-ipv6-all: Linux dual stack tests
/test-ipv6-only-all: Linux IPv6 only tests

Besides, you can skip a check with /skip-*, e.g. /skip-e2e: skip Linux IPv4 e2e tests.

Skipping a check should be used only when the change doesn’t influence the specific function. For example:

doc change: skip all checks
comment change: skip all checks
test/e2e/* change: skip conformance and networkpolicy checks
*_windows.go change: skip Linux checks

For more information about the tests we run as part of CI, please refer to .

Cherry-picks to release branches

If your PR fixes a critical bug, it may need to be backported to older release branches which are still maintained. If this is the case, one of the Antrea maintainers will let you know once your PR is approved. Please refer to the documentation on for more information.

Conventions for Writing Documentation

Short name of IP Security should be IPsec as per .
Any Kubernetes object in log/comment should start with upper case, eg: Namespace, Pod, Service.

Inclusive Naming

For symbol names and documentation, do not introduce new usage of harmful language such as ‘master / slave’ (or ‘slave’ independent of ‘master’) and ‘blacklist / whitelist’. For more information about what constitutes harmful language and for a reference word replacement list, please refer to the .

We are committed to removing all harmful language from the project. If you detect existing usage of harmful language in code or documentation, please report the issue to us or open a Pull Request to address it directly. Thanks!

To build the Antrea Docker image together with all Antrea bits, you can simply do:

Checkout your feature branch and cd into it.
Run make

The second step will compile the Antrea code in a golang container, and build a Ubuntu 20.04 Docker image that includes all the generated binaries. must be installed on your local machine in advance. If you are a macOS user and cannot use Docker Desktop to contribute to Antrea for licensing reasons, check out this for possible alternatives.

Alternatively, you can build the Antrea code in your local Go environment. The Antrea project uses the Go modules support which was introduced in Go 1.11. It facilitates dependency tracking and no longer requires projects to live inside the $GOPATH.

To develop locally, you can follow these steps:

Checkout your feature branch and cd into it.
To build all Go files and install them under bin, run
To run all Go unit tests, run make test-unit
To build the Antrea Ubuntu Docker image separately with the binaries generated in step 2, run make ubuntu

Reverting a commit

Create a branch in your forked repo
```
git checkout -b revertName
```
Sync the branch with upstream
```
git revert -s SHA
```
Push this new commit.
```
git push $remoteRevertName revertName
```
Create a Pull Request on GitHub. Visit your fork at https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea and click Compare & Pull Request button next to your remoteRevertName branch.

Sign-off Your Work

As a CNCF project, Antrea must enforce the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) on all Pull Requests. We require that for all commits constituting the Pull Request, the commit message contains the Signed-off-by line with an email address that matches the commit author. By adding this line to their commit messages, contributors sign-off that they adhere to the requirements of the DCO.

Git provides the -s command-line option to append the required line automatically to the commit message:

git commit -s -m 'This is my commit message'

For an existing commit, you can also use this option with --amend:

If more than one person works on something it’s possible for more than one person to sign-off on it. For example:

Signed-off-by: Some Developer somedev@example.com
Signed-off-by: Another Developer anotherdev@example.com

We use the to enforce that all commits in a Pull Request include the required Signed-off-by line. If this is not the case, the app will report a failed status for the Pull Request and it will be blocked from being merged.

Compared to our earlier CLA, DCO tends to make the experience simpler for new contributors. If you are contributing as an employee, there is no need for your employer to sign anything; the DCO assumes you are authorized to submit contributions (it’s your responsibility to check with your employer).

We use labels and workflows (some manual, some automated with GitHub Actions) to help us manage triage, prioritize, and track issue progress. For a detailed discussion, see .

Filing An Issue

Help is always appreciated. If you find something that needs fixing, please file an issue . Please ensure that the issue is self explanatory and has enough information for an assignee to get started.

Before picking up a task, go through the existing issues and make sure that your change is not already being worked on. If it does not exist, please create a new issue and discuss it with other members.

For simple contributions to Antrea, please ensure that this minimum set of labels are included on your issue:

kind – common ones are kind/feature, kind/support, kind/bug, kind/documentation, or kind/design. For an overview of the different types of issues that can be submitted, see . The kind of issue will determine the issue workflow.
area (optional) – if you know the area the issue belongs in, you can assign it. Otherwise, another community member will label the issue during triage. The area label will identify the area of interest an issue or PR belongs in and will ensure the appropriate reviewers shepherd the issue or PR through to its closure. For an overview of areas, see the docs/github-labels.md.
size (optional) – if you have an idea of the size (lines of code, complexity, effort) of the issue, you can label it using a . The size can be updated during backlog grooming by contributors. This estimate is used to guide the number of features selected for a milestone.

All other labels will be assigned during issue triage.

Once an issue has been submitted, the CI (GitHub actions) or a human will automatically review the submitted issue or PR to ensure that it has all relevant information. If information is lacking or there is another problem with the submitted issue, an appropriate triage/<?> label will be applied.

After an issue has been triaged, the maintainers can prioritize the issue with an appropriate priority/<?> label.

Once an issue has been submitted, categorized, triaged, and prioritized it is marked as . A ready-to-work issue should have labels indicating assigned areas, prioritization, and should not have any remaining triage labels.

Issue and PR Kinds

Use a kind label to describe the kind of issue or PR you are submitting. Valid kinds include:

kind/api-change – for api changes
– for filing a bug
kind/cleanup – for code cleanup and organization
– for deprecating a feature
kind/design – for proposing a design or architectural change
– for updating documentation
kind/failing-test – for reporting a failed test (may create with automation in future)
– to request support. You may also get support by using our Slack channel for interactive help. If you have not set up the appropriate accounts, please follow the instructions in .

Contributing to Antrea