This is our custom fork of phpBB, for running the language forum site.

Your code contributions are welcome!

How to Contribute

Bug reports are always welcome!

If you want to propose a code change, here are a few principles:

1. We strongly prefer to use phpBB 3.1 extensions that plug in cleanly using the official extension API. Actually editing the phpBB source code is a last resort.
2. If your proposed change involves a lot of work, or if it would substantially alter the feel of the forum, please discuss it on the forum first!
3. You can submit your proposed change as an ordinary GitHub "Pull Request."

How to prepare a pull request

First, create a fork of this repository using the "Fork" button on the upper right. Then, check out your fork, substituting the appropriate username below:

# Insert your own username here.
git [email protected]:$MY_GITHUB_NAME/phpbb.git

# Switch to the newly-created directory, and check out the correct
# branch, along with any submodules:
cd phpbb
git checkout custom
git submodule update --init

# Create an upstream branch so that you can access the main repo later:
git remote add upstream [email protected]:language-learners/phpbb.git

Now, create a branch for the feature you want to add:

# Make sure we base our branch off the latest `custom`.
git checkout custom
git pull upstream custom

# Create a new branch and check it out.
git checkout -b cool_extension

# Push a copy of our new branch to our personal repo.
git push -u origin cool_extension

Now you can go ahead and make any changes you want. See below for instructions on using docker-compose to run a local copy of the site.

Some notes about preparing pull requests:

1. Please include no more than one extension or feature per branch. This makes it easy for us to pick which features to merge right away, and which to discuss further. (As a special exception, you may include multiple language packs in one branch, as long as each is in a separate commit.) You may submit multiple branches, each based off of custom.
2. When including third-party code, please always (a) have exactly one commit for each piece of third-party code and (b) include the version number of the code and the URL where you found it. This is so future maintainers can figure out how to upgrade extensions and language packs. :-)
3. Please do not the README.md file (unless you're actually submitting improvements).
4. Please double-check your patches for files that don't belong.
5. Please try very hard to avoid making patches to the existing phpBB source code. These make it very hard for us to upgrade to new versions of phpBB. Whenever possible, we prefer to use the extension API.

When your branch looks good, you can run:

git push origin cool_extension

...and then go to GitHub and create a pull request based off the upstream custom branch.

Running the site locally

The recommended way to run the site locally is to install docker and docker-compose, which will allow you to run code inside "containers", which are sort of like lightweight virtual machines. This will allow you to hack on the code without manually installing PHP, MySQL, and a bunch of different extensions and libraries.

You can get Docker from the official site. Mac and Windows users should probably try using Docker Toolbox, which provides all the necessary command-line tools plus a GUI.

Assuming you have working copies of docker and docker-compose, and that your system supports a Unix-like Terminal with git, you can run the following commands:

# Check out the source code from GitHub and switch into the source
# directory before running the setup commands, if you haven't already done
# so following the steps above.
git clone https://github.com/language-learners/phpbb.git
cd phpbb

# Check out our custom branch (or substitute the name our feature branch),
# if you haven't already done so.
git checkout custom
git submodule update --init

# Install the PHP packages required to run the site, and make sure the
# database exists.  You generally only need to do this once, unless we
# upgrade phpBB.
docker-compose run --rm setup

# Start up the database and the site.
docker-compose up site

If the docker-compose command is missing, or unable to find a working copy of docker, then please consult your Docker Toolbox or other Docker setup instructions, particularly the part about getting the command-line tools correctly configured. You may be told to run something like:

eval "$(docker-machine env default)"

From here, you can visit http://localhost:8000/ and finish the phpBB install process. Fill in the following:

• Database server hostname or DSN: db
• Database name: phpbb
• Database username: root
• Database password: root

You will be asked to install a config.php file. This goes in the phpBB subdirectory of the repository, and you'll need to run:

chmod a+r phpBB/config.php

Once this is done, unfortunately, you'll be asked to remove phpBB/install directory from phpBB. To temporarily get rid of phpBB/install, run:

rm -r phpBB/install/

Before checking your changes in, you can run the following command to restore the deleted phpBB/install:

git checkout phpBB/install

Deploying the site to production

This requires being a site admin with server access. But you can do it as follows, if you run a secure machine where your environment variables are not vulnerable.

Before starting, make sure that all your local changes are properly commited.

# One-time setup.  (We'll make this better.)
(cd deploy && bundle install)

# Specify where to deploy to.
export DEPLOY_HOST=foo.com DEPLOY_USER=bar
# Leading space required to omit password from shell history.
 export DEPLOY_PASSWORD=CorrectHorseBatteryStaple

# Run the deploy.
deploy/deploy-site

The deploy is deliberately slowed down. Once it's done, it will update the deployed branch to point to the version of the code that it just deployed.

License

GNU General Public License v2