gaphor/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

We ❤️ our Contributors!

First off, thank you for considering contributing to Gaphor. It's people like you that make Gaphor such a great modeling tool.

Why a Guideline?

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue, assessing changes, and helping you finalize your pull requests.

What we are Looking For

Gaphor is an open source project, and we love to receive contributions from our community — you! There are many ways to contribute, from writing tutorials or blog posts, improving the documentation, translating the app, submitting bug reports and feature requests or writing code which can be incorporated into Gaphor itself.

What we are not Looking For

Please, don't use the issue tracker for support questions. Check whether the question can be answered on our Matrix room.

Ground Rules

Responsibilities

• Ensure cross-platform compatibility for every change that's accepted. Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• Ensure that code that goes into core meets all requirements in this PR Review Checklist.
• Create issues for any major changes and enhancements that you wish to make.
• Discuss things transparently and get community feedback.
• Don't add any classes to the codebase unless absolutely needed. Error on the side of using functions.
• Keep feature versions as small as possible, preferably one new feature per version.
• Be welcoming to newcomers and encourage diverse new contributors from all backgrounds. We expect all contributors to comply with the GNOME Code of Conduct.

Your First Contribution

Unsure where to begin contributing to Gaphor? You can start by looking through these first-timers-only and up-for-grabs issues:

• First-timers-only issues - issues which should only require a few lines of code, and a test or two.
• Up-for-grabs issues - issues which should be a bit more involved than first-timers-only issues.

Is This Your First Open Source Contribution?

Working on your first Pull Request? You can learn how from this free series, How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub.

At this point, you're ready to make your changes! Feel free to ask for help; everyone is a beginner at first 😸

If a maintainer asks you to "rebase" your PR, they're saying that a lot of code has changed, and that you need to update your branch, so it's easier to merge.

Getting Started

For something that is bigger than a one or two line fix:

1. Create your own fork of the code
2. The easiest way to contribute to the project is using GitHub Codespaces:

• Navigate to https://github.com/gaphor/gaphor
• Click the Code drop-down menu and select the Open with Codespaces option.
• Select + New codespace at the bottom on the pane.

Alternatively, you can also setup a local development environment:

• Linux: https://docs.gaphor.org/en/latest/linux.html
• MacOS: https://docs.gaphor.org/en/latest/macos.html
• Windows: https://docs.gaphor.org/en/latest/windows.html

3. Add tests for your changes, run the tests with pytest.
4. Do the changes in your fork.
5. If you like the change and think the project could use it:
   • Be sure you have the pre-commit hook installed above, it will ensure that Ruff is automatically run on any changes for consistent code formatting.
   • Sign your commits.
   • Note the Gaphor Code of Conduct.
   • Create a pull request.

Small contributions such as fixing spelling errors, where the content is small enough to not be considered intellectual property, can be submitted by a contributor as a patch, without signing your commit.

As a rule of thumb, changes are obvious fixes if they do not introduce any new functionality or creative thinking. As long as the change does not affect functionality, some likely examples include the following:

• Spelling / grammar fixes
• Typo correction, white space and formatting changes
• Comment clean up
• Bug fixes that change default return values or error codes stored in constants
• Adding logging messages or debugging output
• Changes to ‘metadata’ files like pyproject.toml, .gitignore, build scripts, etc.
• Moving source files from one directory or package to another

How to Report a Bug

If you find a security vulnerability, do NOT open an issue. Email dan@yeaw.me instead.

When filing an issue, make sure to answer the questions in the issue template.

1. What version are you using?
2. What operating system are you using?
3. What did you do?
4. What did you expect to see?
5. What did you see instead?

How to Suggest a Feature or Enhancement

If you find yourself wishing for a feature that doesn't exist in Gaphor, you are probably not alone. There are bound to be others out there with similar needs. Many of the features that Gaphor has today have been added because our users saw the need. Open an issue on our issues list on GitHub which describes the feature you would like to see, why you need it, and how it should work.

How to translate the app

Gaphor is translated using Weblate. Weblate is an open source web-based translation tool with a tight integration with Git and GitHub. To update a translation, simply go to the Gaphor Weblate project and edit the strings directly in the web interface. Weblate will take care of merging your changes, if needed, and opening a Pull Request to our project.

Alternatively, you can also go to the translation folder and manually edit an existing language file (.po) or start and a new translation by using the gaphor.pot file as a template. The rest of the process is the same as contributing a code contribution.

Code review process

The core team looks at Pull Requests on a regular basis, you should expect a response within a week. After feedback has been given we expect responses within two weeks. After two weeks we may close the pull request if it isn't showing any activity.

Community

You can chat with the Gaphor community on Matrix.