Developing and Documenting Locust

You want to contribute to Locust? Great! Here is a list of open bugs/feature requests.

Install Locust for development

Fork Locust on GitHub and then

# clone the repo:
$ git clone git://github.com/<YourName>/locust.git

# install the poetry build system, see https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation

# install the required poetry plugins:
$ poetry self add "poethepoet[poetry_plugin]"
$ poetry self add "poetry-dynamic-versioning[plugin]"

# perform an editable install of the "locust" package along with the dev and test packages:
$ poetry install --with dev,test

Now the poetry run locust command will run your code (with no need for reinstalling after making changes).

To contribute your changes, push to a branch in your repo and then open a PR on github.

If you install pre-commit, linting and format checks/fixes will be automatically performed before each commit.

Before you open a pull request, make sure all the tests work. And if you are adding a feature, make sure it is documented (in docs/*.rst).

If you’re in a hurry or don’t have access to a development environment, you can simply use Codespaces, the github cloud development environment. On your fork page, just click on Code then on Create codespace on <branch name>, and voila, your ready to code and test.

Testing your changes

We use tox to automate tests across multiple Python versions:

$ tox
...
py39: commands[1]> python3 -m unittest discover
...

To only run a specific suite or specific test you can call pytest directly:

$ pytest locust/test/test_main.py::DistributedIntegrationTests::test_distributed_tags

Debugging

See: Running tests in a debugger.

Formatting and linting

Locust uses ruff for formatting and linting. The build will fail if code does not adhere to it. If you run vscode it will automatically run every time you save a file, but if your editor doesn’t support it you can run it manually:

$ ruff --fix <file_or_folder_to_be_formatted>
$ ruff format <file_or_folder_to_be_formatted>

You can validate the whole project using tox:

$ tox -e ruff
ruff: install_deps> python -I -m pip install ruff==0.1.13
ruff: commands[0]> ruff check .
ruff: commands[1]> ruff format --check
104 files already formatted
  ruff: OK (1.41=setup[1.39]+cmd[0.01,0.01] seconds)
  congratulations :) (1.47 seconds)

Build documentation

The documentation source is in the docs/ directory. To build the documentation you’ll need to Install Locust for development then

  1. Install the documentation requirements:

    $ poetry install --with docs
    
  2. Build the documentation locally:

    $ make build_docs
    

View your generated documentation by opening docs/_build/index.html.

Making changes to Locust’s Web UI

The Web UI is built using React and Typescript

Setup

Node

Install node using nvm to easily switch between node version

  • Copy and run the install line from nvm (starts with curl/wget …)

  • Verify nvm was installed correctly

$ nvm --version
  • Install the proper Node version according to engines in the locust/webui/package.json

$ nvm install {version}
$ nvm alias default {version}

Yarn

  • Install Yarn from their official website (avoid installing through Node if possible)

  • Verify yarn was installed correctly

$ yarn --version
  • Next, install all dependencies

$ cd locust/webui
$ yarn

Developing

To develop while running a locust instance, run yarn watch. This will output the static files to the dist directory. Vite will automatically detect any changed files and re-build as needed. Simply refresh the page to view the changes

In certain situations (usually when styling), you may want to develop the frontend without running a locust instance. Running yarn dev will start the Vite dev server and allow for viewing your changes.

To compile the webui, run yarn build

The frontend can additionally be built using make:

$ make frontend_build

Linting

Run yarn lint to detect lint failures in the frontend project. Running yarn lint --fix will resolve any issues that are automatically resolvable. Your IDE can additionally be configured with ESLint to resolve these issues on save.

Formatting

Run yarn format to fix any formatting issues in the frontend project. Once again your IDE can be configured to automatically format on save.

Typechecking

We use Typescript in the frontend project. Run yarn type-check to find any issues.