CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Scribe-iOS

Thank you for your interest in contributing!

Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open-source project. In return, and in accordance with this project's code of conduct, other contributors will reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue or assessing changes and features.

If you have questions or would like to communicate with the team, please join us in our public Matrix chat rooms. We'd be happy to hear from you!

Contents

• First steps as a contributor
• Learning the tech stack
• Development environment
  • Note on debugging
• Issues and projects
• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Pull requests
• Data edits
• Localization
• Documentation
• Design

First steps as a contributor ⇧

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Scribe-iOS! We look forward to welcoming you to the community and working with you to build an tools for language learners to communicate effectively :) The following are some suggested steps for people interested in joining our community:

• Please join the public Matrix chat to connect with the community
  • Matrix is a network for secure, decentralized communication
  • Scribe would suggest that you use the Element client
  • The General and iOS channels would be great places to start!
  • Feel free to introduce yourself and tell us what your interests are if you're comfortable :)
• Read through this contributing guide for all the information you need to contribute
• Look into issues marked good first issue and the Projects board to get a better understanding of what you can work on
• Check out our public designs on Figma to understand Scribes's goals and direction
• Consider joining our bi-weekly developer sync!

Note

Those new to Swift or wanting to work on their Swift skills are more than welcome to contribute! The team would be happy to help you on your development journey :)

Learning the tech stack ⇧

Scribe is very open to contributions from people in the early stages of their coding journey! The following is a select list of documentation pages to help you understand the technologies we use.

Docs for those new to programming

• Mozilla Developer Network Learning Area
  • Doing MDN sections for HTML, CSS and JavaScript is the best ways to get into web development!

Swift learning docs

• Swift getting started guide
• The Swift Programming Language guide
• Swift Videos from Apple
• Swift Standard Library

Development environment ⇧

Scribe-iOS is developed using the Swift coding language. Those new to Swift or wanting to develop their skills are more than welcome to contribute! The first step on your Swift journey would be to read through the Swift documentation. The general steps to setting up a development environment are:

1. Download Xcode

2. Fork the Scribe-iOS repo, clone your fork, and configure the remotes:

Note

Consider using SSH

Alternatively to using HTTPS as in the instructions below, consider SSH to interact with GitHub from the terminal. SSH allows you to connect without a user-pass authentication flow.

To run git commands with SSH, remember then to substitute the HTTPS URL, https://github.com/..., with the SSH one, git@github.com:....

• e.g. Cloning now becomes git clone git@github.com:<your-username>/Scribe-iOS.git

GitHub also has their documentation on how to Generate a new SSH key 🔑

# Clone your fork of the repo into the current directory.
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/Scribe-iOS.git
# Navigate to the newly cloned directory.
cd Scribe-iOS
# Assign the original repo to a remote called "upstream".
git remote add upstream https://github.com/scribe-org/Scribe-iOS.git

• Now, if you run git remote -v you should see two remote repositories named:
  • origin (forked repository)
  • upstream (Scribe-iOS repository)

3. (Optional) Install pre-commit and its hooks to check for and correct common errors in commits:

pip install pre-commit
pre-commit install
# pre-commit run --all-files

4. Open the Scribe-iOS directory in Xcode

5. In order to run Scribe on an emulator:

   • Read the documentation from Apple if need be
   • In the top bar select Scribe as the scheme
   • If you're debugging you'll need to select the keyboard you're testing as the scheme (see the note on debugging below)
   • Select a device to run the app on
   • Press the run button marked Start the active scheme
   • From here code edits that are made will be reflected in the app each time the active scheme is restarted

Note

Feel free to contact the team in the iOS room on Matrix if you're having problems getting your environment setup!

Note on debugging

The Xcode debugger often doesn't work as expected for Scribe as the keyboards themselves are extensions. To get breakpoints and the debugger to work as you'd expect them to:

• Go up to the top bar where your schemes are (this is a bit to the right of the run button) and change it from Scribe to the language of the keyboard you'd like to debug (see a screenshot of this)
• Choose a device as normal
• Hit the run button (or ⌘-R) to start the active scheme
• When you get a window telling you to "choose an app to run", don't choose Scribe as you might expect, but instead scroll down and select Xcode Previews
• Occasionally you'll be met with just a black screen on startup, in which case you can press Home (or ⇧-⌘-H) and then go directly to Scribe or an app for keyboard testing

Adding the file header template to Xcode

As GPL v3.0 licensed technology, Scribe is expected to include a license header in all files within the codebase. A template for this has been provided in the ScribeTemplates directory. You can have this header automatically added to the top of files by executing the following commands to add it to your Xcode templates:

mkdir ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Templates
ln -s PATH_TO_LOCAL_SCRIBE_DIRECTORY/Scribe-iOS/ScribeTemplates ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Templates/

Issues and projects ⇧

The issue tracker for Scribe-iOS is the preferred channel for bug reports, features requests and submitting pull requests. Scribe also organizes related issues into projects.

Note

Just because an issue is assigned on GitHub doesn't mean that the team isn't interested in your contribution! Feel free to write in the issues and we can potentially reassign it to you.

Be sure to check the -next release- and -priority- labels in the issues for those that are most important, as well as those marked good first issue that are tailored for first time contributors.

Bug reports ⇧

A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful - thank you!

Guidelines for bug reports:

1. Use the GitHub issue search to check if the issue has already been reported.

2. Check if the issue has been fixed by trying to reproduce it using the latest main or development branch in the repository.

3. Isolate the problem to make sure that the code in the repository is definitely responsible for the issue.

Great Bug Reports tend to have:

• A quick summary
• Steps to reproduce
• What you expected would happen
• What actually happens
• Notes (why this might be happening, things tried that didn't work, etc)

To make the above steps easier, the Scribe team asks that contributors report bugs using the bug report template, with these issues further being marked with the bug label.

Again, thank you for your time in reporting issues!

Feature requests ⇧

Feature requests are more than welcome! Please take a moment to find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. When making a suggestion, provide as much detail and context as possible, and further make clear the degree to which you would like to contribute in its development. Feature requests are marked with the feature label, and can be made using the feature request template.

Pull requests ⇧

Good pull requests - patches, improvements and new features - are the foundation of our community making Scribe-iOS. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits. Note that all contributions to this project will be made under the specified license and should follow the coding indentation and style standards (contact us if unsure).

Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (implementing features, refactoring code, etc), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the developers might not want to merge into the project. With that being said, major additions are very appreciated!

When making a contribution, adhering to the GitHub flow process is the best way to get your work merged:

1. If you cloned a while ago, get the latest changes from upstream:

   git checkout <dev-branch>
   git pull upstream <dev-branch>

2. Create a new topic branch (off the main project development branch) to contain your feature, change, or fix:

   git checkout -b <topic-branch-name>

3. Commit your changes in logical chunks, and please try to adhere to Conventional Commits.

Note

The following are tools and methods to help you write good commit messages ✨

• commitlint helps write Conventional Commits
• Git's interactive rebase cleans up commits

4. Locally merge (or rebase) the upstream development branch into your topic branch:

   git pull --rebase upstream <dev-branch>

5. Push your topic branch up to your fork:

   git push origin <topic-branch-name>

6. Open a Pull Request with a clear title and description.

Thank you in advance for your contributions!

Data edits ⇧

Note

Please see the Wikidata and Scribe Guide for an overview of Wikidata and how Scribe uses it.

Scribe does not accept direct edits to the grammar JSON files as they are sourced from Wikidata. Edits can be discussed and the Scribe-Data queries will be changed and ran before an update. If there is a problem with one of the files, then the fix should be made on Wikidata and not on Scribe. Feel free to let us know that edits have been made by opening a data issue or contacting us in the issues for Scribe-Data and we'll be happy to integrate them!

Localization ⇧

Being an app that focusses on language learning, localization plays a big part in what Scribe will eventually be. Those interested are more than welcome to join the team at scribe-org/Scribe-i18n where we work on localizing all Scribe applications via Weblate.

Progress

Documentation ⇧

Documentation is an invaluable way to contribute to coding projects as it allows others to more easily understand the project structure and contribute. Issues related to documentation are marked with the documentation label.

Design ⇧

Designs for Scribe are done in the public design file in Figma. Those interested in helping with Scribe's design are also welcome to share their ideas using the design improvement template that makes an issue marked with the design label.

All branding elements such as logos, icons, colors and fonts should follow those that are set out in scribe-org/Organization. As the project is fully open source, these elements are also open for discussion. Efforts in making Scribe products professional with a distinct and cohesive identity are much appreciated!