xref: /openssl/CONTRIBUTING.md (revision 5854b764)
1HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO OpenSSL
2============================
3
4Please visit our [Getting Started] page for other ideas about how to contribute.
5
6  [Getting Started]: <https://openssl-library.org/community/getting-started>
7
8Development is done on GitHub in the [openssl/openssl] repository.
9
10  [openssl/openssl]: <https://github.com/openssl/openssl>
11
12To request a new feature, ask a question, or report a bug,
13please open an [issue on GitHub](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues).
14
15To submit a patch or implement a new feature, please open a
16[pull request on GitHub](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pulls).
17If you are thinking of making a large contribution,
18open an issue for it before starting work, to get comments from the community.
19Someone may be already working on the same thing,
20or there may be special reasons why a feature is not implemented.
21
22To make it easier to review and accept your pull request, please follow these
23guidelines:
24
25 1. Anything other than a trivial contribution requires a [Contributor
26    License Agreement] (CLA), giving us permission to use your code.
27    If your contribution is too small to require a CLA (e.g., fixing a spelling
28    mistake), then place the text "`CLA: trivial`" on a line by itself below
29    the rest of your commit message separated by an empty line, like this:
30
31    ```
32        One-line summary of trivial change
33
34        Optional main body of commit message. It might contain a sentence
35        or two explaining the trivial change.
36
37        CLA: trivial
38    ```
39
40    It is not sufficient to only place the text "`CLA: trivial`" in the GitHub
41    pull request description.
42
43    [Contributor License Agreement]: <https://www.openssl.org/policies/cla.html>
44
45    To amend a missing "`CLA: trivial`" line after submission, do the following:
46
47    ```
48        git commit --amend
49        # add the line, save and quit the editor
50        git push -f [<repository> [<branch>]]
51    ```
52
53 2. All source files should start with the following text (with
54    appropriate comment characters at the start of each line and the
55    year(s) updated):
56
57    ```
58        Copyright 20xx-20yy The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.
59
60        Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the "License").  You may not use
61        this file except in compliance with the License.  You can obtain a copy
62        in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at
63        https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html
64    ```
65
66 3. Patches should be as current as possible; expect to have to rebase
67    often. We do not accept merge commits, you will have to remove them
68    (usually by rebasing) before it will be acceptable.
69
70 4. Code provided should follow our [coding style] and [documentation policy]
71    and compile without warnings.
72    There is a [Perl tool](util/check-format.pl) that helps
73    finding code formatting mistakes and other coding style nits.
74    Where `gcc` or `clang` is available, you should use the
75    `--strict-warnings` `Configure` option.  OpenSSL compiles on many varied
76    platforms: try to ensure you only use portable features.
77    Clean builds via GitHub Actions are required. They are started automatically
78    whenever a PR is created or updated by committers.
79
80    [coding style]: https://openssl-library.org/policies/technical/coding-style/
81    [documentation policy]: https://openssl-library.org/policies/technical/documentation-policy/
82
83 5. When at all possible, code contributions should include tests. These can
84    either be added to an existing test, or completely new.  Please see
85    [test/README.md](test/README.md) for information on the test framework.
86
87 6. New features or changed functionality must include
88    documentation. Please look at the `.pod` files in `doc/man[1357]` for
89    examples of our style. Run `make doc-nits` to make sure that your
90    documentation changes are clean.
91
92 7. For user visible changes (API changes, behaviour changes, ...),
93    consider adding a note in [CHANGES.md](CHANGES.md).
94    This could be a summarising description of the change, and could
95    explain the grander details.
96    Have a look through existing entries for inspiration.
97    Please note that this is NOT simply a copy of git-log one-liners.
98    Also note that security fixes get an entry in [CHANGES.md](CHANGES.md).
99    This file helps users get more in-depth information of what comes
100    with a specific release without having to sift through the higher
101    noise ratio in git-log.
102
103 8. Guidelines on how to integrate error output of new crypto library modules
104    can be found in [crypto/err/README.md](crypto/err/README.md).
105