Contribution Guidelines

The Redcar devs will gladly receive any code you send in. However, there are some guidelines that will make it more likely that the code you send in will get merged into the Redcar tree:

• Don’t work in secret! Discuss what you’re doing on the mailing list. It’ll make sure nobody is duplicating work, and also makes it more likely that your code will be accepted since core devs will have commented and made suggestions already.
• Have your work on a fork of Redcar on Github. This serves two purposes. First it smooths the process of evaluating patches, second it means that when merged the main Redcar tree will contain a reference to your project and therefore to you. You want the credit right?
• Write significant features on their own branch When it comes to merging your work, it helps if each significant feature can be merged individually.
• Submit your patch on the mailing list Send a message to the Redcar mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/redcar-editor with a subject line like “[PATCH] my great code”.
• Write tests. Your code will be merged much faster if it is well-tested. We use RSpec for unit testing, and Cucumber for SWT integration testing.
• Add functionality with plugins where possible. Avoid hacking Redcar core directly without a necessity.