How to contribute¶
Contents
Prime directives: Privacy, Hackability¶
Searx has two prime directives, privacy-by-design and hackability . The hackability comes in three levels:
support of search engines
plugins to alter search behaviour
hacking searx itself
Note the lack of “world domination” among the directives. Searx has no intention of wide mass-adoption, rounded corners, etc. The prime directive “privacy” deserves a separate chapter, as it’s quite uncommon unfortunately.
Privacy-by-design¶
Searx was born out of the need for a privacy-respecting search tool which can be extended easily to maximize both, its search and its privacy protecting capabilities.
A few widely used features work differently or turned off by default or not implemented at all as a consequence of privacy-by-design.
If a feature reduces the privacy preserving aspects of searx, it should be switched off by default or should not implemented at all. There are plenty of search engines already providing such features. If a feature reduces the protection of searx, users must be informed about the effect of choosing to enable it. Features that protect privacy but differ from the expectations of the user should also be explained.
Also, if you think that something works weird with searx, it’s might be because
of the tool you use is designed in a way to interfere with the privacy respect.
Submitting a bugreport to the vendor of the tool that misbehaves might be a good
feedback to reconsider the disrespect to its customers (e.g. GET vs POST
requests in various browsers).
Remember the other prime directive of searx is to be hackable, so if the above privacy concerns do not fancy you, simply fork it.
Happy hacking.
Code¶
In order to submit a patch, please follow the steps below:
Follow coding conventions.
PEP8 standards apply, except the convention of line length
Maximum line length is 120 characters
The cardinal rule for creating good commits is to ensure there is only one logical change per commit / read Structural split of changes
Check if your code breaks existing tests. If so, update the tests or fix your code.
If your code can be unit-tested, add unit tests.
Add yourself to the git://AUTHORS.rst file.
Choose meaningful commit messages, read Conventional Commits
<type>[optional scope]: <description> [optional body] [optional footer(s)]
Create a pull request.
For more help on getting started with searx development, see Development Quickstart.
Translation¶
Translation currently takes place on transifex.
Caution
Please, do not update translation files in the repo.
Documentation¶
The documentation is built using Sphinx. So in order to be able to generate the required files, you have to install it on your system. Much easier, use our Makefile.
Here is an example which makes a complete rebuild:
$ make docs.clean docs.html
...
The HTML pages are in dist/docs.
live build¶
Live build is like WYSIWYG. If you want to edit the documentation, its
recommended to use. The Makefile target docs.live builds the docs, opens
URL in your favorite browser and rebuilds every time a reST file has been
changed.
$ make docs.live
...
The HTML pages are in dist/docs.
... Serving on http://0.0.0.0:8000
... Start watching changes
Live builds are implemented by sphinx-autobuild. Use environment
$(SPHINXOPTS) to pass arguments to the sphinx-autobuild command. Except
option --host (which is always set to 0.0.0.0) you can pass any
argument. E.g to find and use a free port, use:
$ SPHINXOPTS="--port 0" make docs.live
...
... Serving on http://0.0.0.0:50593
...
deploy on github.io¶
To deploy documentation at github.io use Makefile target make docs.gh-pages, which builds the documentation and runs all the needed git add, commit and push:
$ make docs.clean docs.gh-pages
