Pull requests, bug reports, and all other forms of contribution are welcomed and highly encouraged!
- Asking Questions
- Opening an Issue
- Feature Requests
- Triaging Issues
- Submitting Pull Requests
- Writing Commit Messages
- Code Review
- Coding Style
This guide serves to set clear expectations for everyone involved with the project so that we can improve it together while also creating a welcoming space for everyone to participate. Following these guidelines will help ensure a positive experience for contributors and maintainers.
See our Support Guide. In short, GitHub issues are not the appropriate place to debug your specific project, but should be reserved for filing bugs and feature requests.
Before creating an issue, check if you are using the latest version of the project. If you are not up-to-date, see if updating fixes your issue first.
Review our Security Policy. Do not file a public issue for security vulnerabilities.
A great way to contribute to the project is to send a detailed issue when you encounter a problem. We always appreciate a well-written, thorough bug report.
In short, since you are most likely a developer, provide a ticket that you would like to receive.
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Review the documentation and Support Guide before opening a new issue.
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Do not open a duplicate issue! Search through existing issues to see if your issue has previously been reported. If your issue exists, comment with any additional information you have. You may simply note "I have this problem too", which helps prioritize the most common problems and requests.
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Prefer using reactions, not comments, if you simply want to "+1" an existing issue.
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Fully complete the provided issue template. The bug report template requests all the information we need to quickly and efficiently address your issue. Be clear, concise, and descriptive. Provide as much information as you can, including steps to reproduce, stack traces, compiler errors, library versions, OS versions, and screenshots (if applicable).
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Use GitHub-flavored Markdown. Especially put code blocks and console outputs in backticks. This improves readability.
Feature requests are welcome! While we will consider all requests, we cannot guarantee your request will be accepted. We want to avoid feature creep. Your idea may be great, but also out-of-scope for the project. If accepted, we cannot make any commitments regarding the timeline for implementation and release. However, you are welcome to submit a pull request to help!
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Do not open a duplicate feature request. Search for existing feature requests first. If you find your feature (or one very similar) previously requested, comment on that issue.
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Fully complete the provided feature request template. The feature request template asks for all necessary information for us to begin a productive conversation.
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Be precise about the proposed outcome of the feature and how it relates to existing features. Include implementation details if possible.
You can triage issues which may include reproducing bug reports or asking for additional information, such as version numbers or reproduction instructions. Any help you can provide to quickly resolve an issue is very much appreciated!
We love pull requests! Before forking the repo and creating a pull request for non-trivial changes, it is usually best to first open an issue to discuss the changes, or discuss your intended approach for solving the problem in the comments for an existing issue.
Note: All contributions will be licensed under the project's license.
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Smaller is better. Submit one pull request per bug fix or feature. A pull request should contain isolated changes pertaining to a single bug fix or feature implementation. Do not refactor or reformat code that is unrelated to your change. It is better to submit many small pull requests rather than a single large one. Enormous pull requests will take enormous amounts of time to review, or may be rejected altogether.
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Coordinate bigger changes. For large and non-trivial changes, open an issue to discuss a strategy with the maintainers. Otherwise, you risk doing a lot of work for nothing!
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Prioritize understanding over cleverness. Write code clearly and concisely. Remember that source code usually gets written once and read often. Ensure the code is clear to the reader. The purpose and logic should be obvious to a reasonably skilled developer, otherwise you should add a comment that explains it.
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Follow existing coding style and conventions. Keep your code consistent with the style, formatting, and conventions in the rest of the code base. When possible, these will be enforced with a linter. Consistency makes it easier to review and modify in the future.
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Include test coverage. Add unit tests or UI tests when possible. Follow existing patterns for implementing tests.
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Update the example project if one exists to exercise any new functionality you have added.
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Add documentation. Document your changes with code doc comments or in existing guides.
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Use the repository default branch. Branch from and submit your pull request to the repository default branch. Usually this is
main
, but it could bedev
,develop
, ormaster
. -
Resolve any merge conflicts that occur.
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Promptly address any CI failures. If your pull request fails to build or pass tests, please push another commit to fix it.
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Use
pre-commit
whenever possible. We want to provide high quality code. For this reason some of our repositories are using several "pre-commit hooks". Please check your code before you will create pull-requests. See pre-commit documentation for further details. -
When writing comments, use properly constructed sentences, including punctuation.
Depending on the project we tend to use various approaches for writing good commit messages. See this as an example of a "good" commits message. We also tend to use Conventional Commits, with a scope detailing the area of the change being made. There is not strong requirement on what approach should be used. Just as with code style, - consistency is the most important. Try following the existing repository commit message format.
Regardless of chosen approach, a role of thumb would be to:
- Separate subject from body with a blank line
- Limit the subject line to 50 characters
- (Optionally) Capitalize the subject line
- Do not end the subject line with a period
- Use the imperative mood in the subject line (example: "Fix networking issue")
- Wrap the body at about 72 characters
- Use the body to explain why, not what and how (the code shows that!)
- If applicable, prefix the title with the relevant component name. (examples: "docs: Fix typo", "profile: Fix missing avatar")
tag: Short summary of changes in 50 chars or less
Add a more detailed explanation here, if necessary. Possibly give
some background about the issue being fixed, etc. The body of the
commit message can be several paragraphs. Further paragraphs come
after blank lines and please do proper word-wrap.
Wrap it to about 72 characters or so. In some contexts,
the first line is treated as the subject of the commit and the
rest of the text as the body. The blank line separating the summary
from the body is critical (unless you omit the body entirely);
various tools like `log`, `shortlog` and `rebase` can get confused
if you run the two together.
Explain the problem that this commit is solving. Focus on why you
are making this change as opposed to how or what. The code explains
how or what. Reviewers and your future self can read the patch,
but might not understand why a particular solution was implemented.
Are there side effects or other unintuitive consequences of this
change? Here's the place to explain them.
- Bullet points are okay, too
- A hyphen or asterisk should be used for the bullet, preceded
by a single space, with blank lines in between
Note the fixed or relevant GitHub issues at the end:
Resolves: #123
See also: #456, #789
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Review the code, not the author. Look for and suggest improvements without disparaging or insulting the author. Provide actionable feedback and explain your reasoning.
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You are not your code. When your code is critiqued, questioned, or constructively criticized, remember that you are not your code. Do not take code review personally.
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Always do your best. No one writes bugs on purpose. Do your best, and learn from your mistakes.
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Kindly note any violations to the guidelines specified in this document.
Consistency is the most important. Following the existing style, formatting, and naming conventions of the file you are modifying and of the overall project. Failure to do so will result in a prolonged review process that has to focus on updating the superficial aspects of your code, rather than improving its functionality and performance.
For example, if all private properties are prefixed with an underscore _
,
then new ones you add should be prefixed in the same way. Or, if methods are
named using camelcase, like thisIsMyNewMethod
, then do not diverge from that
by writing this_is_my_new_method
. You get the idea. If in doubt, please ask
or search the codebase for something similar.
When possible, style and format will be enforced with a linter.