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Development

10/19/18About 2 min

Development

Before you get busy coding a new feature, create an issue and discuss the details in the issue tracker.

Environment set-up

This guide assumes you have a GitHub account, as well as Python 3, virtualenv and Git installed. The guide is written for Bash, for Windows you can use for example Bash bundled with Git.

  • Fork pywebview
  • Clone your forked repository
git clone https://github.com/<username>/pywebview
cd pywebview
  • Create a virtual environment
virtualenv -p python3 venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pip install pytest
  • Set up pre-commit hooks
pre-commit install
  • Hello world
python examples/simple_browser.py

Development work-flow

  • Create and checkout a new branch
git checkout -b new-branch master

  • Make your changes

  • Format and lint your code (this happens automatically with pre-commit)

# Manual formatting and linting (optional, pre-commit does this automatically)
ruff check --fix .
ruff format .
  • Run tests
pytest tests
  • Commit and push your work
git add .
git commit -m "Your commit message goes here"  # Pre-commit hooks will run automatically
git push -u origin new-branch

Testing

pywebview uses pytest for testing.

To run all the tests in the project root directory

 pytest tests

To run a specific test

pytest tests/test_simple_browser.py

Tests cover only trivial mistakes, syntax errors, exceptions and such. In other words there is no functional testing. Each test verifies that a pywebview window can be opened and exited without errors when run under different scenarios. Sometimes test fail / stuck randomly. The cause of the issue is not known, any help on resolving random fails is greatly appreciated.

Code Formatting and Linting

pywebview uses Ruff for code formatting and linting, along with pre-commit hooks to automatically enforce code quality standards.

Pre-commit Hooks

Pre-commit hooks are automatically installed when you run pre-commit install during setup. They will run automatically before each commit to:

  • Fix import sorting
  • Apply consistent code formatting (single quotes, line length, etc.)
  • Check for large files, trailing whitespace, and YAML syntax
  • Run linting checks and apply automatic fixes where possible

Ruff Configuration

The project uses the following Ruff configuration (defined in pyproject.toml):

  • Line length: 100 characters
  • Quote style: Single quotes for strings
  • Import sorting: Enabled with webview as a known first-party package
  • Target Python version: 3.7+
  • Enabled rules: Pyflakes (F), pycodestyle (E4, E7, E9), isort (I), and pyupgrade (UP)

Manual Formatting

While pre-commit hooks handle formatting automatically, you can also run formatting manually:

# Check for linting issues and apply fixes
ruff check --fix .

# Format code
ruff format .

# Run all pre-commit hooks manually
pre-commit run --all-files

Code Style Guidelines

  • Use single quotes for strings (unless the string contains single quotes)
  • Maximum line length of 100 characters
  • Follow PEP 8 conventions
  • Use f-strings instead of .format() or % formatting where possible
  • Remove unused imports and variables
  • Use isinstance() instead of type() comparisons

Learning

Windows

macOS

Linux

Qt