Trac Development

These pages provide information about the development of Trac and its​extensions. It is written for skilled​Python developers who have experience using Trac.

Development is largely coordinated online.

Source code is managed in repositories and for Trac this is a combination of the main trunk in Subversion and mirror inGitHub. SeeTracRepositories,TracSubversion,TracGit andTracMercurial for more information.

We also keep track of what has been deprecated or removed between releases, see ourRelease Notes and the summary ofAPI Changes. API Changes are summarised using theAPI change field attached to every ticket; this is a feature implemented since 1.0dev.

How to get started?

Start by setting up adevelopment environment and become familiar withinstalling Trac and creating newTracEnvironments.

Then, you should get familiar with Trac'sComponentArchitecture,PluginDevelopment andDatabaseApi.TheTracTroubleshooting page contains some debugging tips which are also quite useful during development.

When you're ready to contribute changes, note that we're picky about ourCodingStyle whenSubmittingPatches. For changes to be accepted, the modified Trac source should still pass theUnitTests and theFunctionalTests. Ideally, also contribute new tests.

Discussions about Trac Development happen on the​Trac-dev mailing list. New development ideas are usually best discussed first on that list, it's a quick and easy way to get feedback on any given topic or question. As usual, search the archive first, to avoid rehashing old discussions. For longer term developments, or for documentation purposes, use the wiki.

To refer to a mail from Trac-dev in this wiki, use thegooglegroupsInterWiki prefix, for example:​googlegroups:trac-dev:1b9c4e3eaeda3a0d. You can see the message identifier in the address bar of your browser when viewing the message in Individual Message view mode. You can go there from the default threaded view by clicking onMore options and then on theIndividual Message orShow Original links.

Development guides