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Contribute to code

Retool uses Hatch for environment management, code formatting and testing. Tests are run using Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13.

You can install Hatch and the dependencies Retool uses with the following command:

pip install hatch hatch-pip-compile hatch-pyinstaller

To enter an environment and install Retool's depedencies, run the following command:

hatch shell

When you're done and want to exit the environment, run the following command:

exit

Run formatters and tests

Before running any tests, install Visual Studio Code, and set its path in tests/integration.py. This is used for comparing diffs if a test fails.

To run all formatters, and then run all tests with all defined Python versions in pyproject.toml, run the following command:

hatch run all

For speed when developing, you can run quick tests instead. This skips the formatters, and runs all tests except the determinism test using only the latest defined Python version. To run the quick tests, run the following command:

hatch run quick:test

Formatting and syntax

To only run black, isort, and ruff against the code:

hatch run style:fix

To run MyPy against the code:

hatch run types:check

Integration tests

Instead of running the complete test suite, you can run individual tests that validate specific Retool functionality.

Tests different settings for compilation handling:

hatch run quick:compilations

Tests that Retool outputs the same content five times in a row:

hatch run quick:determinism

Tests that Retool is correctly excluding all user-selected title types:

hatch run quick:exclusions

Tests that Retool is correctly filtering by different language priorities:

hatch run quick:languages

Tests that Retool is correctly filtering by different region priorities:

hatch run quick:regions

To view all tests that you can run, see the [tool.hatch.envs.quick.scripts] section in pyproject.toml.

Enable developer mode

If you create a file named .dev and place it in Retool's folder, the following options are enabled by default:

  • Output DAT files in legacy parent/clone format. Useful to ensure file relationships are working as they should.

  • Report clone list warnings during processing. Useful to discover issues with clone lists. These are silenced in normal operation, as they can get noisy as DAT files update.

  • Pause on clone list warnings. So you can see what's going on.

You can override this at any time in Retool CLI with the -q flag.

Disable multiprocessing

When using input statements in the Python code, make sure to also pass the --singlecpu flag, or turn on Disable multiprocessor usage in Retool GUI. This is because input statements don't play well with multiprocessing and cause crashes.