.. _contribution-guidelines: Contribution Guidelines ======================= Authorship ---------- All code authors are listed in the AUTHORS file. When your first pull request is accepted, the maintainer will add your details to the AUTHORS file, the NICKS file and the list of authors in the GUI. Commits must be made with the same name and email as listed in the AUTHORS file. To accomplish this, ensure that your git configuration is set correctly prior to making your first commit:: $ git config --global user.name "Jane Doe" $ git config --global user.email janedoe@example.com You must be reachable on the given email address. If you do not wish to use your real name for whatever reason, using a nickname or pseudonym is perfectly acceptable. Team Membership --------------- Contributing useful commits via pull requests will at some point get you invited to the Syncthing core team. This team gives you push access to most repositories, subject to the guidelines below. The Syncthing maintainers team has the same access permissions, the added responsibility of reviewing major changes, and the ability to invite members into the core team. Code Review ----------- Commits will generally fall into one of the three categories below, with different requirements on review. Trivial: A small change or refactor that is obviously correct. These may be pushed without review by any member of the core team. Examples: `removing dead code `__, `updating values `__. Minor: A new feature, bugfix or refactoring that may need extra eyes on it to weed out mistakes, but is architecturally simple or at least uncontroversial. Minor changes must go through a pull request and can be merged on approval by any other developer on the core or maintainers team. Tests must pass. Examples: `adding caching `__, `fixing a small bug `__. Major: A complex new feature or bugfix, a large refactoring, or a change to the underlying architecture of things. A major change must be reviewed by a member of the *maintainers* team. Tests must pass. The categorization is inherently subjective; we recommend erring on the side of caution - if you are not sure whether a change is *trivial* or merely *minor*, it's probably minor. First time contributions from new developers are always major. Coding Style ------------ General ~~~~~~~ - All text files use Unix line endings. The git settings already present in the repository attempts to enforce this. - When making changes, follow the brace and paranthesis style of the surrounding code. Go Specific ~~~~~~~~~~~ - Follow the conventions laid out in `Effective Go `__ as much as makes sense. The review guidelines in `Go Code Review Comments `__ should generally be followed. - Each commit should be ``go fmt`` clean. - Imports are grouped per ``goimports`` standard; that is, standard library first, then third party libraries after a blank line. Commits ------- - The commit message subject should be a single short sentence describing the change, starting with a capital letter but without ending punctuation. - Commits that resolve an existing issue must include the issue number as ``(fixes #123)`` at the end of the commit message subject. A correctly formatted commit message looks like this:: Correctly handle nil error in verbose logging (fixes #1921) - If the commit message subject doesn't say it all, one or more paragraphs of describing text should be added to the commit message. This should explain why the change is made and what it accomplishes. - A contribution solving a single issue or introducing a single new feature should usually be a single commit based on the current ``master`` branch. You may be asked to "rebase" or "squash" your pull request to make sure this is the case, especially if there have been amendments during review. It's perfectly fine to make review changes as new commits and just push them to the same branch -- but a squash should be performed when the change is good to be merged. Tests ----- Yes please, do add tests when adding features or fixing bugs. Also, when a pull request is filed a number of automatic tests are run on the code. This includes: - That the code actually builds and the test suite passes. - That the code is correctly formatted (``go fmt``). - That the commits are based on a reasonably recent ``master``. - That the author is listed in AUTHORS. - That the output from ``go lint`` and ``go vet`` is clean. (This checks for a number of potential problems the compiler doesn't catch.) If the pull request is invasive or scary looking, the full integration test suite can be run as well. Branches -------- - ``master`` is the main branch containing good code that will end up in the next release. You should base your work on it. It won't ever be rebased or force-pushed to. - ``vx.y`` branches exist to make patch releases on otherwise obsolete minor releases. Should only contain fixes cherry picked from master. Don't base any work on them. - Other branches are probably topic branches and may be subject to rebasing. Don't base any work on them unless you specifically know otherwise. Tags ---- All releases are tagged semver style as ``vx.y.z``. The maintainer doing the release signs the tag using their GPG key. Licensing --------- All contributions are made under the same MPLv2 license as the rest of the project, except documentation, user interface text and translation strings which are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You retain the copyright to code you have written.