Everyone is welcome to contribute code to this project, provided that they are willing to license their contributions under the same license as the project itself. We follow a simple 'inbound=outbound' model for contributions: the act of submitting an 'inbound' contribution means that the contributor agrees to license the code under the same terms as the project's overall 'outbound' license - in this case, Apache Software License v2 (see LICENSE).
The preferred and easiest way to contribute changes to the project is to fork it on github, and then create a pull request to ask us to pull your changes into our repo (https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests/)
We use the main branch as an unstable/development branch - users looking for a stable branch should use the release branches or a given release instead.
The workflow is that contributors should fork the main branch to make a 'feature' branch for a particular contribution, and then make a pull request to merge this back into the matrix.org 'official' main branch. We use GitHub's pull request workflow to review the contribution, and either ask you to make any refinements needed or merge it and make them ourselves. The changes will then land on master when we next do a release.
We use continuous integration, and all pull requests get automatically tested by it: if your change breaks the build, then the PR will show that there are failed checks, so please check back after a few minutes.
This project aims to target TypeScript with published versions having JS-compatible code. All files should be written in TypeScript.
Members should not be exported as a default export in general - it causes problems
with the architecture of the SDK (index file becomes less clear) and could
introduce naming problems (as default exports get aliased upon import). In
general, avoid using export default.
The remaining code-style for this project is not formally documented, but contributors are encouraged to read the code style document for element-web and follow the principles set out there.
Please ensure your changes match the cosmetic style of the existing project, and never mix cosmetic and functional changes in the same commit, as it makes it horribly hard to review otherwise.
In order to have a concrete record that your contribution is intentional and you agree to license it under the same terms as the project's license, we've adopted the same lightweight approach that the Linux Kernel (https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches), Docker (https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md), and many other projects use: the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin: http://developercertificate.org/). This is a simple declaration that you wrote the contribution or otherwise have the right to contribute it to Matrix:
Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1
Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
660 York Street, Suite 102,
San Francisco, CA 94110 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
have the right to submit it under the open source license
indicated in the file; or
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
license and I have the right under that license to submit that
work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
in the file; or
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
it.
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
this project or the open source license(s) involved.
If you agree to this for your contribution, then all that's needed is to include the line in your commit or pull request comment:
Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@email.example.org>
We accept contributions under a legally identifiable name, such as your name on government documentation or common-law names (names claimed by legitimate usage or repute). Unfortunately, we cannot accept anonymous contributions at this time.
Git allows you to add this signoff automatically when using the -s flag to
git commit, which uses the name and email set in your user.name and
user.email git configs.
If you forgot to sign off your commits before making your pull request and are on Git 2.17+ you can mass signoff using rebase:
git rebase --signoff origin/develop