Development Model

The DIRACGrid Project is a pure open source project, advanced collectively by a distributed team of developers working in parallel on the core software as well as on various extensions. Everybody is welcome to participate.

The DIRACGrid project includes several repositories, all hosted in Github:

  • DIRAC is the main repository: contains the client and server code

  • WebAppDIRAC is the repository for the web portal

  • Pilot is not a DIRAC extension, but a new version of the DIRAC pilots (dubbed Pilots 3.0)

  • DIRACOS is the repository for the old (py2) DIRAC dependencies

  • DIRACOS2 is the repository for the DIRAC dependencies (py3)

  • COMDIRAC is a DIRAC extension of its CLI

  • DB12 is not a DIRAC extension, but a self-contained quick benchmark

  • management is not a DIRAC extension, but a repository for creating docker images used for tests and for creating releases

  • diraccfg is a stand-alone utility for parsing DIRAC cfg files

The content of the other repositories at https://github.com/DIRACGrid have either been included in those above, or became obsolete.

This work must be supported by a suitable development model which is described in this chapter.

The DIRAC code development is done with the help of the Git code management system. It is inherently distributed and is well suited for the project. It is outlined in this guide on github

The DIRAC Development Model relies on the excellent Git capability for managing code branches which is mandatory for a distributed team of developers.

DIRAC releases nomenclature follow PEP 440.

Release branches

The following branches are used in managing DIRAC releases:

integration branch

this branch is used to assemble new code developments that will be eventually released as a new major or minor release.

release branches

the release branches contain the code corresponding to a given major or minor release. This is the production code which is distributed for the DIRAC installations. The release branches are created when a new minor release is done. The patches are incorporated into the release branches. The release branch names have the form rel-vXrY, where vXrY part corresponds to the branch minor release version.

master branch

the master branch corresponds to the current stable production code. It is a copy of the corresponding release branch.

These branches are the only ones maintained in the central Git repository by the release managers. They are used to build DIRAC releases. They also serve as reference code used by developers as a starting point for their work.