Files
dikte/CONTRIBUTING.md
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yusufipek 23d56acfb5 Publish a Windows setup beside the AppImage and the disk image
The releases page had nothing for Windows, so the only way in was a
checkout, a Python and a pip install. What goes out now is one setup
program per release: PyInstaller's directory, the pinned ffmpeg the
disk image already uses, and Inno Setup around both. It installs for
the account alone, so no administrator is asked for.

Two executables over the one program there, because a windowed one on
Windows has no standard output at all: Dikte.exe for the Start Menu and
dikte.exe for the terminal, sharing everything they carry. The icon is
drawn by Dikte itself into an .ico, the way the Mac's .icns and Linux's
PNGs already are, so there is still no image file in the repository.

Starting at sign-in is a registry value rather than a Startup shortcut,
which is what lets the setup program, the uninstaller and
`dikte integrate` all mean the same thing: the wizard asks once, and
typing the command changes the answer later.

The three builds move into build.yml, which release.yml now calls
instead of holding its own copy, and which a pull request touching the
packaging runs on its own. A broken build is then a red pull request
rather than a failed release.
2026-08-18 16:08:47 +03:00

5.4 KiB

Contributing

Running the tests

python -m unittest discover          # all of them, about a second
python -m unittest tests.test_api    # one file
python -m unittest tests.test_api.Transcribe.test_no_key_at_all

Nothing to install: the tests use the standard library's unittest, and the only dependency is the PyQt6 the application already needs. They reach neither the network, the microphone, nor your real ~/.config/dikte, so they are safe to run anywhere and they run on a machine with no display.

CI runs the same command on Python 3.11 through 3.13. A pull request that turns it red will not be merged.

Writing one

Put it in tests/, named after the module it covers. Inherit from tests.support.DikteTest whenever the code under test touches a file, a setting or the interface language: it hands the test its own config and data directories, resets the language, and puts them back afterwards.

tests/support.py has the rest of what you need:

For Use
An HTTP call fake_urlopen(reply, …), then read the recorded requests
A reply that fails http_error(429), url_error(), raw_body("not json")
Reading what was sent sent_json(request), multipart_fields(request)
A program on the PATH only_these_tools("pactl", "wl-copy")
Standing on another system mock.patch.object(sys, "platform", "darwin")
Audio silence(), tone(), speech(), stereo(), make_wav()
A settings object self.config(cleanup_enabled=False)

Three things about this codebase trip up a new test:

Signals from a worker thread are never delivered. Pipeline, MeetingPipeline and FileTranscriber emit from the thread start() spawned, which Qt queues until an event loop runs one. Call _work() directly instead: it is the same code one frame down, and the signals arrive at once.

A level that never moves is not speech. The silence check is relative, so a steady tone reads as its own noise floor however loud it is. Use speech() rather than tone() when a recording is meant to have somebody talking in it.

cli.launch_gui replaces the process. With no instance running, some verbs os.execv into the application, which would take the test run with it. Patch cli.launch_gui. DikteTest blocks os.execv as a backstop, so a test that forgets fails rather than hangs.

Another platform

Four systems are supported: Wayland, X11, macOS and Windows. Each one is a named entry in a table, and one chooser picks between them, so a fifth adds an entry and a line rather than a branch inside every function. The tables are paste.Desktop (clipboard and key press), audio.Sound (capture, the device lists, and whether the far side of a meeting can be recorded at all), paths.directories() (where the settings and the data live) and hotkey.backend(), which names the one mechanism a session has for holding a key. Keep sys.platform inside the chooser and read it there every time: a constant settled at import is one no test can stand somewhere else.

Where a platform cannot do something, say so in its table entry rather than in the code that asks. audio.Sound.meetings is the shape of it: Windows offers no capture device for what the speakers are playing, and a caller reading a False there can tell that apart from an empty device list, which only means the tool that lists them is not installed.

The tests are split along the same line, and almost none of them are skipped. 1094 of the 1157 run on any machine, including every line of the Wayland, X11, macOS and Windows backends: the programs are faked at shutil.which, the frameworks and system libraries at the one function that loads them (paste._win_api, hotkey._win_input). A test class says which system it is standing on rather than avoiding the question:

class MacOS(ClipboardContract, DikteTest):
    platform = "darwin"
    here = paste.MACOS

so the Linux half is checked on a Mac, the macOS half on Linux and the Windows half on both, and a change to a chooser cannot quietly break the platform nobody is sitting at. What the systems owe in common is written once as a contract class and subclassed by each of them.

The 43 that do carry @linux_only are the ones that would need the real thing: the /dev/input listener, KDE's shortcut file, GNOME's gsettings. The 20 with @posix_only are the half of integrate.py that writes files, the menu entry and the login item a downloaded build puts down for itself, which want a home directory laid out the way those two systems lay one out. Its Windows half is one registry value, since the setup program there did the rest, and the three functions that read and write it are faked like anything else. Mark a test either way only when faking it would leave nothing to test. A test that quietly stops running on the platform you are porting to protects nothing.

What a pull request should carry

A change to behaviour comes with a test for it. Adding a provider means a row in config.TRANSCRIBERS and a test that the request goes to the right URL with the right fields; adding a platform means a test for whatever the parsing of its device list, clipboard or shortcuts looks like. Adding a setting means both halves of settings_ui.py: the round trip in tests/test_ui.py is what catches only one of them being written.

Match the surrounding code: it is plain Python with no framework, comments explain why rather than what, and neither the code nor the commit messages use an em dash.