This section is about help and best practices for new bashbot developers. The main focus on is creating new versions of bashbot, not on develop your individual bot. Nevertheless the rules and tools described here can also help you with your bot development.
bashbot development is done on github. If you want to provide fixes or new features [fork bashbot on githup](https://help.github.com/en/articles/fork-a-repo) and provide changes as [pull request on github](https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-pull-request).
In normal mode of operation all bashbot output is discarded.
To get these messages (and more) you can start bashbot in the current shell ```./bashbot.sh startbot```. Now you can see all output or erros from bashbot.
In addition you can change the change the level of verbosity by adding a third argument after startbot.
```
"debug" redirects all output to "DEBUG.log", in addtion every update is logged in "MESSAGE.LOG" and "INLINE.log"
"debugterm" same as debug but output and errors are sent to terminal
"xdebug" same as debug plus set bash option '-x' to log any executed command
"xdebugterm" same as xdebug but output and errors are sent to terminal
**Modules** live in ```modules/*.sh``` and are bashbot functions factored out in seperate files, gouped by functionality. Main reason for creating modules was
to keep 'bashbot.sh' small, while extending functionality. In addition not every functionality is needed by a bot, so you can
disable modules by removing them, e.g. rename the respective module files to 'module.sh.off'.
**Addons** live in ```addons/*.sh.dist``` and are disabled by default. To activate an addon remove '.dist' from the filename, e.g.
```cp addons/example.sh.dist addons/example.sh```. Addons must register to BASHBOT_EVENTS at startup, e.g. to call a function everytime a message is recieved.
2. setup your [environment for UTF-8](4_expert.md#Setting-up-your-Environment)
3. clone your bashbot fork to a new directory ```git clone https://github.com/<YOURNAME>/telegram-bot-bash.git```, replace ```<YOURNAME>``` with your username on github
4. create and change to your develop branch ```git checkout -b <YOURBRANCH>```, replace ```<YOURBRANCH>``` with the name you want to name it, e.g. 'develop'
5. give your (dev) fork a new version tag: ```git tag vx.xx```(optional)
6. setup github hooks by running ```dev/install-hooks.sh``` (optional)
After some development it may time to create a new version for the users. a new version can be in sub version upgrade, e.g. for fixes and smaller additions or
a new release version for new features. To mark a new version use ```git tag NEWVERSION``` and run ```dev/version.sh``` to update all version strings.
Usually I start with pre versions and when everything looks good I push out a release candidate (rc) and finally the new version.
If you release a new Version run ```dev/make-distribution.sh``` to create the zip and tar.gz archives in the dist directory and attach them to the github release. Do not forget to delete directory dist afterwards.
Bashbot is tagged with version numbers. If you start a new development cycle you can tag your fork with a version higher than the current version.
E.g. if you fork 'v0.60' the next develop version should tagged as ```git tag "v0.61-dev"``` for fixes or ```git tag "v0.70-dev"``` for new features.
To get the current version name of your develepment fork run ```git describe --tags```. The output looks like ```v0.70-dev-6-g3fb7796``` where your version tag is followed by the number of commits since you tag your branch and followed by the latest commit hash. see also [comments in version.sh](../dev/version.sh)
To update the Version Number in files run ```dev/version.sh files```, it will update the line '#### $$VERSION$$ ###' in all files to the current version name.
To update version in all files run 'dev/version.sh' without parameter.
For a shell script running as a service it's important to be paranoid about quoting, globbing and other common problems. So it's a must to run shellchek on all shell scripts before you commit a change. this is automated by a git hook activated in Setup step 6.
To run shellcheck for a single script run ```shellcheck -x script.sh```, to check all schripts run ```dev/hooks/pre-commit.sh```.
Starting with version 0.70 bashbot has a test suite. To start testsuite run ```dev/all-tests.sh```. all-tests.sh will return 'SUCCESS' only if all tests pass.
All tests are placed in the directory ```test```. To disable a test remove the execute flag from the '*-test.sh' script, to (re)enable a test make the script executable again.