CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

We appreciate your contributions! Because this is an open source project, we want to keep it as easy as possible to contribute changes. However, we need contributors to follow a few guidelines.

By contributing to pyOCD you agree to the Code of Conduct.

Coding style

Contributed source code must follow PEP8 style conventions.

Significant new code must use type annotations. However, until the bulk of pyOCD code is converted to have type annotations, static type checking isn't actual performed by CI. Also, it is perfectly ok to fix bugs without annotating the errant module.

Other formatting requirements:

• 4 space indents, no tabs are allowed.
• No trailing whitespace.
• All source files must end with a newline (an empty line at the end).
• Lines should generally not be longer than 120 characters, though this is not a hard rule. Overall readability is more important.

Process

Before you submit your changes, please ensure that:

• The code meets style requirements listed above.
• You have added your copyright below existing copyrights in the files you modified. New files should have only your copyright. See the License section below for more.
• Changes have been tested locally to the extent possible. (Obviously, we don't expect you to have as many test boards as we do.)

Please create a new pull request on GitHub with your contribution. The new pull request should target the develop branch. Before creating the pull request, please ensure that all tests pass. We also run the tests on a wide range of boards for every pull request using our CI setup. Changes must pass all required pull request checks before they can be accepted.

The developers' guide describes how to create your development environment. The automated tests guide provides information about the available types of tests and describes how to run the tests.

License

By creating a pull request on GitHub asking to merge your content into pyOCD, you agree to the Developer Certificate of Origin, stating that you have the right to grant license to your contribution under the Apache 2.0 license.

Copyright on contributions is retained by their author(s). Please add the author(s) copyright below existing copyrights in the license header at the top of the contributed source file(s). If you are doing the work for your employer, you should use your employer's copyright. If a file is newly added by you, it must contain the standard license header with your copyright. Please note that we do not list changes in each source file by copyright owner, as this becomes a burden to maintain.

PyOCD follows the "inbound = outbound" licensing policy. This is the default for the GitHub Terms of Service.

Contributing source code that is already licensed using a license other than Apache 2.0 is possible, but each case must be considered individually. If you are the owner of the source code, then you have the right to relicense to Apache 2.0. The most important thing is that the license is compatible with Apache 2.0. Examples are MIT, the BSD licenses, and similar. GPL-licensed code is expressly disallowed to be contributed, as the GPL is not compatible with Apache 2.0 (or any of the Apache-compatible licenses).