Refactor Contributors List to Dynamically Read from File

[hemmatio]

Proposed Changes

(Describe your changes here. Also describe the motivation for your changes: what problem do they solve, or how do they improve the application or codebase? If this pull request fixes an open issue, use a keyword to link this pull request to the issue.)
This PR aims to refactor the 'About' section in the dropdown menu located in the top-right corner of MarkUs pages. The contributors list, previously hardcoded in markus_contributors.html.erb, is now dynamically read from doc/markus-contributors.txt, which is updated by each new contributor.
...

Screenshots of your changes (if applicable)

Before:

After:

Associated documentation repository pull request (if applicable)

Type of Change

(Write an X or a brief description next to the type or types that best describe your changes.)

Type	Applies?
🚨 Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)
✨ New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)
🐛 Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
🎨 User interface change (change to user interface; provide screenshots)	X
♻️ Refactoring (internal change to codebase, without changing functionality)	X
🚦 Test update (change that only adds or modifies tests)
📦 Dependency update (change that updates a dependency)
🔧 Internal (change that only affects developers or continuous integration)

Checklist

(Complete each of the following items for your pull request. Indicate that you have completed an item by changing the [ ] into a [x] in the raw text, or by clicking on the checkbox in the rendered description on GitHub.)

Before opening your pull request:

• I have performed a self-review of my changes.
  • Check that all changed files included in this pull request are intentional changes.
  • Check that all changes are relevant to the purpose of this pull request, as described above.
• I have added tests for my changes, if applicable.
  • This is required for all bug fixes and new features.
• I have updated the project documentation, if applicable.
  • This is required for new features.
• If this is my first contribution, I have added myself to the list of contributors.

After opening your pull request:

• I have updated the project Changelog (this is required for all changes).
• I have verified that the pre-commit.ci checks have passed.
• I have verified that the CI tests have passed.
• I have reviewed the test coverage changes reported by Coveralls.
• I have requested a review from a project maintainer.

Questions and Comments

(Include any questions or comments you have regarding your changes.)
08/01/25: This should be a decent solution. Maybe it's inefficient to read the file each time it is rendered, and it should be stored in memory instead? Either way, I still have to create test cases. Will likely first test the helper method I created.

08/01/25: Moved file reading step into initializer file (config/initializers/contributors.rb), preventing unnecessary repeated computations. TODO: Create test cases

12/01/25: Added tests. Waiting for CI results.

[coveralls]

Pull Request Test Coverage Report for Build 12737992572

Details

• 18 of 18 (100.0%) changed or added relevant lines in 2 files are covered.
• No unchanged relevant lines lost coverage.
• Overall coverage increased (+0.003%) to 91.777%

---

Totals
Change from base Build 12735409878:	0.003%
Covered Lines:	41209
Relevant Lines:	44220

---

💛 - Coveralls

[david-yz-liu]

@hemmatio this approach is correct but you rightly pointed out that reading the file on each request for the about page is inefficient. You can instead read in the contents as a Rails initialization step, storing it in a global variable to be later accessed, similar to what we do for the MarkUs version.

[david-yz-liu]

Make this function return a string rather than a list (since otherwise the same string computation will be repeated every time a user loads the "about" page).

Also use Array#join to avoid the trailing comma.