Developers' Guide

Steps to get an operational virtual environment:

1. git clone https://github.com/apache/skywalking-python.git
2. Run the script(setup-linux.sh, setup-windows.ps1) for your relevant OS to create a virtual environment folder in the project root (skywalking-python/venv) and install all the necessary requirements
3. Set up your IDE to use the generated virtual environment of Python

Developing a new plugin

You can always take the existing plugins as examples, while there are some general ideas for all plugins.

1. A plugin is a module under directory skywalking/plugins/ with an install method;
2. Inside the install method, you find out the relevant method(s) of the libraries that you plan to instrument, and create/close spans before/after those method(s).
3. Every plugin requires a corresponding test under tests/plugin before it can be merged, refer to the plugin test guide when writing a plugin test.
4. Update the supported list.
5. Add the environment variables to the list if any.

Steps after coding

If your PR introduces the need for a new non-standard library which needs to be pulled via pip or if it removes the need for a previously-used library:

1. Execute the build_requirements script relevant to your OS.
2. Double check the requirements.txt file in the project root to ensure that the changes have been reflected.