.. include:: ./../../macros.txt
.. include:: ./../../units.txt

.. _SOFTWARE_DEVELOPMENT_PROCESS:

Software Development Process
============================

The main goal of the development process is to ensure that only well tested
code is committed to the |master_branch|. This can either be a new feature to
extend the capabilities of the existing implementation or changes that remove
a bug in the existing implementation. For the sake of simplicity these changes
are summarized under the terms of |change_request| (for details see
`here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_request>`__).

The starting point of all work done, is an |issue| describing a bug in the
current implementation or a feature that is missing or needs to be extended.
Based on this |issue| a so called |feature_branch| is created (the name is
the same wether it is bug or feature) by a developer working on the related
issue. This |feature_branch| is pushed to the main (bare) repository managed by
some git server. The git server triggers the CI pipeline. This pipeline
manages several build servers that then run different integration tasks (jobs)
(building the binary, testing and checking for guideline violations). The
output of a build server is a success matrix based on the run jobs. The status
of the test is shown in the |change_request|.
In parallel the changes that would be introduced to the |master_branch| are
reviewed by developers (developers that did not work on the |feature_branch|)
and comments to the changes are added as needed.

The first requirement for a |feature_branch| getting merged into the
|master_branch| is the success of the CI pipeline and the second requirement is
the approval of the reviewer. If one of both is missing merging the
|feature_branch| is rejected.

This development process is shown in
:numref:`software-development-process-diagram`.

.. graphviz:: software-development-process.dot
    :caption: |foxbms| software development process
    :name: software-development-process-diagram

.. |issue| replace:: ``issue``
.. |change_request| replace:: ``Change Request``
.. |feature_branch| replace:: ``feature`` branch
.. |master_branch| replace:: ``master`` branch