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Developer on boarding

Introduction

This doc is a quick introduction about the project and its architecture.

It's aim is to help new developers to understand the overall project and where to start developing.

Other useful documentation:

  • all the docs in this folder!
  • the contributing doc, that you should also read carefully.

Quick introduction to Matrix

Matrix website: matrix.org, discover page. Note: Matrix.org is also hosting a homeserver (.well-known file). The reference homeserver (this is how Matrix servers are called) implementation is Synapse. But other implementations exist. The Matrix specification is here to ensure that any Matrix client, such as Element Android and its SDK can talk to any Matrix server.

Have a quick look to the client-server API documentation: Client-server documentation. Other network API exist, the list is here: (https://spec.matrix.org/latest/)

Matrix is an open source protocol. Change are possible and are tracked using this GitHub repository. Changes to the protocol are called MSC: Matrix Spec Change. These are PullRequest to this project.

Matrix object are Json data. Unstable prefixes must be used for Json keys when the MSC is not merged (i.e. accepted).

Matrix data

There are many object and data in the Matrix worlds. Let's focus on the most important and used, Room and Event

Room

Room is a place which contains ordered Events. They are identified with their room_id. Nearly all the data are stored in rooms, and shared using homeserver to all the Room Member.

Note: Spaces are also Rooms with a different type.

Event

Events are items of a Room, where data is embedded.

There are 2 types of Room Event:

  • Regular Events: contain useful content for the user (message, image, etc.), but are not necessarily displayed as this in the timeline (reaction, message edition, call signaling).
  • State Events: contain the state of the Room (name, topic, etc.). They have a non null value for the key state_key.

Also all the Room Member details are in State Events: one State Event per member. In this case, the state_key is the matrixId (= userId).

Important Fields of an Event:

  • event_id: unique across the Matrix universe;
  • room_id: the room the Event belongs to;
  • type: describe what the Event contain, especially in the content section, and how the SDK should handle this Event;
  • content: dynamic Event data; depends on the type.

So we have a triple event_id, type, state_key which uniquely defines an Event.

Sync

This is managed by the Rust SDK.

Rust SDK

The Rust SDK is hosted here: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk.

This repository contains an implementation of a Matrix client-server library written in Rust.

With some bindings we can embed this sdk inside other environments, like Swift or Kotlin, with the help of Uniffi. From these kotlin bindings we can generate native libs (.so files) and kotlin classes/interfaces.

Matrix Rust Component Kotlin

To use these bindings in an android project, we need to wrap this up into an android library (as the form of an .aar file).
This is the goal of https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-components-kotlin. This repository is used for distributing kotlin releases of the Matrix Rust SDK. It'll provide the corresponding aar and also publish them on maven.

Most of the time you want to use the releases made on maven with gradle:

implementation("org.matrix.rustcomponents:sdk-android:latest-version")

You can also have access to the aars through the release page.

Build the SDK locally

Easiest way: run the script ../tools/sdk/build_rust_sdk.sh and just answer the questions.

Legacy way:

If you need to locally build the sdk-android you can use the build script.

For this please check the prerequisites from the repo.

Checkout both matrix-rust-sdk and matrix-rust-components-kotlin repositories

git clone git@github.com:matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk.git
git clone git@github.com:matrix-org/matrix-rust-components-kotlin.git

Then you can launch the build script from the matrix-rust-components-kotlin repository with the following params:

  • -p Local path to the rust-sdk repository
  • -o Optional output path with the expected name of the aar file. By default the aar will be located in the corresponding build/outputs/aar directory.
  • -r Flag to build in release mode
  • -m Option to select the gradle module to build. Default is sdk.
  • -t Option to to select an android target to build against. Default will build for all targets.

So for example to build the sdk against aarch64-linux-android target and copy the generated aar to Element X project:

./scripts/build.sh -p [YOUR MATRIX RUST SDK PATH] -t aarch64-linux-android -o [YOUR element-x-android PATH]/libraries/rustsdk/matrix-rust-sdk.aar

Troubleshooting:

  • You may need to set ANDROID_NDK_HOME e.g export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk/ndk.
  • If you get the error thread 'main' panicked at 'called Option::unwrap()on aNone value', .cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-6f17d22bba15001f/cargo-ndk-2.11.0/src/cli.rs:345:18 try updating your Cargo NDK version. In this case, 2.11.0 is too old so cargo install cargo-ndk to install a newer version.
  • If you get the error Unsupported class file major version 64 try changing your JVM version. In this case, Java 20 is not supported in Gradle yet, so downgrade to an earlier version (Java 17 worked in this case).

You are good to test your local rust development now!

The Android project

The project should compile out of the box.

This Android project is a multi modules project.

  • app module is the Android application module. Other modules are libraries;
  • features modules contain some UI and can be seen as screen or flow of screens of the application;
  • libraries modules contain classes that can be useful for other modules to work.

A few details about some modules:

  • libraries-core module contains utility classes;
  • libraries-designsystem module contains Composables which can be used across the app (theme, etc.);
  • libraries-elementresources module contains resource from Element Android (mainly strings);
  • libraries-matrix module contains wrappers around the Matrix Rust SDK.

Most of the time a feature module should not know anything about other feature module. The navigation glue is currently done in the app module.

Here is the current simplified module dependency graph:

flowchart TD
    subgraph Application
    app([:app])--implementation-->appnav([:appnav])
    end
    subgraph Features
    featureapi([:features:*:api])
    featureimpl([:features:*:impl])
    end
    subgraph Libraries
        subgraph Matrix
        matrixapi([:matrix:api])
        matriximpl([:matrix:impl])
        end
    libraryarch([:libraries:architecture])
    libraryapi([:libraries:*:api])
    libraryimpl([:libraries:*:impl])
    end
    subgraph Matrix RustSdk
    RustSdk([Rust Sdk])
    end

    app--implementation-->featureimpl
    app--implementation-->libraryimpl
    appnav--implementation-->featureapi
    appnav--implementation-->libraryarch
    featureimpl--api-->featureapi
    featureimpl--implementation-->matrixapi
    featureimpl--implementation-->libraryapi
    featureimpl--implementation-->libraryarch
    matriximpl--implementation-->matrixapi
    matrixapi--api-->RustSdk
    matriximpl--api-->RustSdk
    featureapi--implementation-->libraryarch
    libraryimpl--api-->libraryapi

Application

This Android project mainly handle the application layer of the whole software. The communication with the Matrix server, as well as the local storage, the cryptography (encryption and decryption of Event, key management, etc.) is managed by the Rust SDK.

The application is responsible to store the session credentials though.

Jetpack Compose

Compose is essentially two libraries : Compose Compiler and Compose UI. The compiler (and his runtime) is actually not specific to UI at all and offer powerful state management APIs. See https://jakewharton.com/a-jetpack-compose-by-any-other-name/

Some useful links:

About Preview

Global architecture

Main libraries and frameworks used in this application:

Some patterns are inspired by Circuit

Here are the main points:

  1. Presenter and View does not communicate with each other directly, but through State and Event
  2. Views are compose first
  3. Presenters are also compose first, and have a single present(): State method. It's using the power of compose-runtime/compiler.
  4. The point of connection between a View and a Presenter is a Node.
  5. A Node is also responsible for managing Dagger components if any.
  6. A ParentNode has some children Node and only know about them.
  7. This is a single activity full compose application. The MainActivity is responsible for holding and configuring the RootNode.
  8. There is no more needs for Android Architecture Component ViewModel as configuration change should be handled by Composable if needed.

Template and naming

This documentation provides you with the steps to install and use the AS plugin for generating modules in your project. The plugin and templates will help you quickly create new features with a standardized structure.

A. Installation

Follow these steps to install and configure the plugin and templates:

  1. Install the AS plugin for generating modules : Generate Module from Template
  2. Run the script tools/templates/generate_templates.sh to generate the template zip file
  3. Import file templates in AS :
    • Navigate to File/Manage IDE Settings/Import Settings
    • Pick the tmp/file_templates.zip files
    • Click on OK
  4. Configure generate-module-from-template plugin :
    • Navigate to AS/Settings/Tools/Module Template Settings
    • Click on + / Import From File
    • Pick the tools/templates/FeatureModule.json

Everything should be ready to use.

B. Usage

Example for a new feature called RoomDetails:

  1. Right-click on the features package and click on Create Module from Template
  2. Fill the 2 text fields like so:
    • MODULE_NAME = roomdetails
    • FEATURE_NAME = RoomDetails
  3. Click on Next
  4. Verify that the structure looks ok and click on Finish
  5. The modules api/impl should be created under features/roomdetails directory.
  6. Sync project with Gradle so the modules are recognized (no need to add them to settings.gradle).
  7. You can now add more Presentation classes (Events, State, StateProvider, View, Presenter) in the impl module with the Template Presentation Classes. To use it, just right click on the package where you want to generate classes, and click on Template Presentation Classes. Fill the text field with the base name of the classes, ie RootRoomDetails in the root package.

Note that naming of files and classes is important, since those names are used to set up code coverage rules. For instance, presenters MUST have a suffix Presenter,states MUST have a suffix State, etc. Also we want to have a common naming along all the modules.

Push

Note Firebase is implemented, but Unified Push is not yet fully implemented on the project, so this is not possible to choose this push provider in the app at the moment.

Please see the dedicated documentation for more details.

This is the classical scenario:

  • App receives a Push. Note: Push is ignored if app is in foreground;
  • App asks the SDK to load Event data (fastlane mode). We have a change to get the data faster and display the notification faster;
  • App asks the SDK to perform a sync request.

Dependencies management

We are using Gradle version catalog on this project.

All the dependencies (including android artifact, gradle plugin, etc.) should be declared in ../gradle/libs.versions.toml file. Some dependency, mainly because they are not shared can be declared in build.gradle.kts files.

Renovate is set up on the project. This tool will automatically create Pull Request to upgrade our dependencies one by one. A dependency dashboard issue is maintained by the tool and allow to perform some actions.

Test

We have 3 tests frameworks in place, and this should be sufficient to guarantee a good code coverage and limit regressions hopefully:

Note For now we want to avoid using class mocking (with library such as mockk), because this should be not necessary. We prefer to create Fake implementation of our interfaces. Mocking can be used to mock Android framework classes though, such as Bitmap for instance.

Code coverage

kover is used to compute code coverage. Only have unit tests can produce code coverage result. Running Maestro does not participate to the code coverage results.

Kover configuration is defined in the app build.gradle.kts file.

To compute the code coverage, run:

./gradlew :app:koverHtmlReport

and open the Html report: ../app/build/reports/kover/html/index.html

To ensure that the code coverage threshold are OK, you can run

./gradlew :app:koverVerify

Note that the CI performs this check on every pull requests.

Also, if the rule Global minimum code coverage. is in error because code coverage is > maxValue, minValue and maxValue can be updated for this rule in the file build.gradle.kts (you will see further instructions there).

Other points

Logging

**Important warning: ** NEVER log private user data, or use the flag LOG_PRIVATE_DATA. Be very careful when logging data class, all the content will be output!

Timber is used to log data to logcat. We do not use directly the Log class. If possible please use a tag, as per

Timber.tag(loggerTag.value).d("my log")

because automatic tag (= class name) will not be available on the release version.

Also generally it is recommended to provide the Throwable to the Timber log functions.

Last point, note that Timber.v function may have no effect on some devices. Prefer using Timber.d and up.

Translations

Translations are handled through localazy. See the dedicated README.md file for information on how to configure new modules etc.

Rageshake

Rageshake is a feature to send bug report directly from the application. Just shake your phone and you will be prompted to send a bug report.

Bug reports can contain:

  • a screenshot of the current application state
  • the application logs from up to 15 application starts
  • the logcat logs

The data will be sent to an internal server, which is not publicly accessible. A GitHub issue will also be created to a private GitHub repository.

Rageshake can be very useful to get logs from a release version of the application.

Tips

  • Element Android has a developer mode in the Settings/Advanced settings. Other useful options are available here; (TODO Not supported yet!)
  • Show hidden Events can also help to debug feature. When developer mode is enabled, it is possible to view the source (= the Json content) of any Events; (TODO Not supported yet!)
  • Type /devtools in a Room composer to access a developer menu. There are some other entry points. Developer mode has to be enabled; (TODO Not supported yet!)
  • Hidden debug menu: when developer mode is enabled and on debug build, there are some extra screens that can be accessible using the green wheel. In those screens, it will be possible to toggle some feature flags; (TODO Not supported yet!)
  • Using logcat, filtering with Compositions can help you to understand what screen are currently displayed on your device. Searching for string displayed on the screen can also help to find the running code in the codebase.
  • When this is possible, prefer using sealed interface instead of sealed class;
  • When writing temporary code, using the string "DO NOT COMMIT" in a comment can help to avoid committing things by mistake. If committed and pushed, the CI will detect this String and will warn the user about it. (TODO Not supported yet!)
  • Very occasionally the gradle cache misbehaves and causes problems with Dagger. Try building with --no-build-cache if Dagger isn't behaving how you expect.

Happy coding!

The team is here to support you, feel free to ask anything to other developers.

Also please feel free to update this documentation, if incomplete/wrong/obsolete/etc.

Thanks!