To contribute additions/changes:
- Fork this repo
- Create a new branch
git checkout -b my-changes - Commit your changes
- Create a pull request
- Agree to the BuildingSync Contribution Policy below
Version 1.0
The BuildingSync® team welcomes your contribution to the project. You can contribute to BuildingSync
project in several ways: by using the software, reporting issues, contributing documentation, or
contributing code back to the project. The GitHub Contributing to Open Source
guide provides a good overview. If you contribute code, you agree that your contribution may be
incorporated into BuildingSync and made available under the BuildingSync license.
The contribution process for BuildingSync is composed of three steps:
-
Send consent email
In order for us to distribute your code as part of BuildingSync under the BuildingSync license, we’ll need your consent. An email acknowledging understanding of these terms and agreeing to them is all that will be asked of any contributor. Send an email to the BuildingSync project manager (see below for the address) including the following text and a list of co-contributors (if any):
I agree to contribute to BuildingSync. I agree to the following terms and conditions for my contributions: First, I agree that I am licensing the copyright to my contributions under the terms of the current BuildingSync license. Second, I hereby grant to Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, to any successor manager and distributor of BuildingSync appointed by the U.S. Department of Energy, and to all recipients of a version of BuildingSync that includes my contributions, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable patent license under any patent claims owned by me, or owned by my employer and known to me, that are or will be, necessarily infringed upon by my contributions alone, or by combination of my contributions with the version of BuildingSync to which they are contributed, to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer any version of BuildingSync that includes my contributions, in source code and object code form. Third, I represent and warrant that I am authorized to make the contributions and grant the foregoing license(s). Additionally, if, to my knowledge, my employer has rights to intellectual property that covers my contributions, I represent and warrant that I have received permission to make these contributions and grant the foregoing license(s) on behalf of my employer.
Once we have your consent on file, you’ll only need to redo it if conditions change (e.g. a change of employer).
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Scope agreement and timeline commitment
If your contribution is small (e.g. a bug fix), simply submit your contribution via GitHub. If you find a bug, first make sure it is not an already known issue, then report it in the GitHub issue tracker for this repository. If your contribution is larger (e.g. a new feature or new functionality/capability), we’ll need to evaluate your proposed contribution first. To do that, we need a written description of why you wish to contribute to BuildingSync, a detailed description of the project that you are proposing, the precise functionalities that you plan to implement as part of the project, and a timeframe for implementation (see here for the template contribution proposal document). After we review your materials, we will schedule a meeting or conference call to discuss your information in more detail. We may ask you to revise your materials and make changes to it, which we will re-review. Before you do any work we must reach prior agreement and written approval on project areas, scope, timeframe, expected contents, and functionalities to be addressed.
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Technical contribution process
We want BuildingSync to adhere to our established quality standards. As such, we ask that you follow the information below. Smaller, non-code contributions may not require as much review as code contributions, but all contributions will be reviewed. Code contributions will initially be in a source control branch, and then will be merged into the official BuildingSync repository after review and approval. Any bugs, either discovered by you, us, or any users will be tracked in our issue tracker. We request you that you take full responsibility for correcting bugs. Be aware that, unless notified otherwise, the correction of bugs takes precedence over the submission or creation of new code.
Timeline - We require that you align your contributions with the BuildingSync release schedule. BuildingSync is currently released publicly two times a year (approximately on the last workday of May and November). There are cutoff dates after which new contributions are not accepted for the upcoming release (approximately two weeks before release date).
Code Reviews - You will be working and testing your code in a source control branch. When a piece of functionality is complete, tested and working, let us know and we will review your code. If the functionality that you contributed is complex, we will ask you for a written design document as well. We want your code to follow coding standards, be clear, readable and maintainable, and of course it should do what it is supposed to do. We will look for errors, style issues, comments (or lack thereof), and any other issues in your code. We will inform you of our comments and we expect you to make the recommended changes. New re-reviews may be expected until the code complies with our required processes.
Unit Tests - We ask that you supply unit tests along with the code that you have written, if applicable. A unit test is a program that exercises your code in isolation to verify that it does what it is supposed to do. Your unit tests are very important to us. First, they give an indication that your code works according to its intended functionality. Second, we execute your unit tests automatically along with our unit tests to verify that the overall BuildingSync code continues to work.
Code Coverage - We require that your unit tests provide an adequate coverage of the source code you are submitting. You will need to design your unit tests in a way that all critical parts of the code (at least) are tested and verified.
Documentation - Proper documentation is crucial for our users, without it users will not know how to use your contribution. We require that you create user documentation so that end users know how to use your new functionality.
For further questions or information:
Luigi Gentile Polese
BuildingSync Project Management
luigi.gentile.polese@nrel.gov
303.275.4362
BuildingSync is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Building Technologies Office (BTO), and managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
BuildingSync is developed in collaboration with NREL, LBNL, and private firms.
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