contributing

Contributing

Thanks for your interest in improving RVZStudio. This page describes how to report issues, submit changes and follow the project conventions.

Ways to contribute

• Report bugs — open an issue with reproduction steps and log output.
• Request features — describe the use case and the expected behavior.
• Improve documentation — the docs/ folder and the root ReadMe.md are good starting points.
• Submit code — bug fixes, platform fixes and new features are welcome.
• Star the project — it helps others discover RVZStudio.

Reporting issues

Open an issue at https://github.com/purelogiccode/RVZStudio/issues and include:

1. Environment — operating system, architecture and RVZStudio version (About window).
2. Steps to reproduce — the exact sequence that triggers the problem.
3. Expected vs actual behavior.
4. Logs — the relevant part of the log file (see Troubleshooting for locations). The on-screen log viewer shows the same messages.
5. Screenshots — press F8 in the application to save one to the Screenshot folder.

Please do not attach copyrighted game files. A small corrupt or synthetic sample that reproduces the problem is fine.

Development workflow

1. Fork the repository and create a topic branch from master.

2. Make your changes, keeping commits focused and atomic.

3. Build and test locally:

   dotnet build RVZStudio.sln -c Release
   dotnet test RVZStudio.sln

4. Push the branch and open a pull request against master.

5. Ensure CI passes on all three operating systems before requesting review.

Coding conventions

• Language — C# with nullable reference types and implicit usings enabled.
• Analyzers — Roslynator and Meziantou analyzers run as part of the build. Keep the build at zero warnings.
• Async — services are asynchronous and accept a CancellationToken; never block the UI thread.
• UI updates — marshal to the UI thread with Dispatcher.UIThread from services and background tasks.
• Logging — use Serilog (Log.Information, Log.Warning, Log.Error). Warning and above are automatically forwarded to the bug-report API, so do not log expected user errors at those levels.
• Comments — the codebase prefers self-documenting code; add XML documentation for public APIs where it clarifies intent.
• Tests — add or update tests in RVZStudio.Tests for service and model changes. Tests must pass on Windows, Linux and macOS.

Commit conventions

The project uses Conventional Commits:

<type>: <short summary>

<optional body>

Common types used in this repository: feat, fix, chore, refactor, docs, test, ci.

Examples:

feat: add WIA output to the extraction tab
fix: keep the batch running when DolphinTool fails to start
docs: document the release workflow

Pull request checklist

• The solution builds with zero warnings.
• dotnet test passes.
• New behavior is covered by tests where practical.
• Documentation (ReadMe.md, docs/) is updated when user-facing behavior changes.
• The commit history is clean and follows the conventions above.

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions are licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, the same license as the project.

Related pages

• Building — build, test and publish instructions.
• Architecture — how the application is structured.