keepassxc/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to KeePassXC

👍🎉 First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! 🎉👍

The following is a set of guidelines for contributing to KeePassXC on GitHub. These are just guidelines, not rules. Use your best judgment, and feel free to propose changes to this document in a pull request.

Table of contents

What should I know before I get started?

• Open Source Contribution Policy

How can I contribute?

• Feature requests
• Bug reports
• Discuss with the team
• Your first code contribution
• Pull requests
• Translations

Styleguides

• Git branch strategy
• Git commit messages
• Coding styleguide

What should I know before I get started?

Open Source Contribution Policy

Source: Version 0.3, 2015–11–18

Policy

We will accept contributions of good code that we can use from anyone.

What this means

• “We will accept”: This means that we will incorporate your contribution into the project’s codebase, adapt it as needed, and give you full credit for your work.
• “contributions”: This means just about anything you wish to contribute to the project, as long as it is good code we can use. The easier you make it for us to accept your contribution, the happier we are, but if it’s good enough, we will do a reasonable amount of work to use it.
• “of good code”: This means that we will accept contributions that work well and efficiently, that fit in with the goals of the project, that match the project’s coding style, and that do not impose an undue maintenance workload on us going forward. This does not mean just program code, either, but documentation and artistic works as appropriate to the project.
• “that we can use”: This means that your contribution must be given freely and irrevocably, that you must have the right to contribute it for our unrestricted use, and that your contribution is made under a license that is compatible with the license the project has chosen and that permits us to include, distribute, and modify your work without restriction.
• “from anyone”: This means exactly that. We don’t care about anything but your code. We don’t care about your race, religion, national origin, biological gender, perceived gender, sexual orientation, lifestyle, political viewpoint, or anything extraneous like that. We will neither reject your contribution nor grant it preferential treatment on any basis except the code itself. We do, however, reserve the right to tell you to go away if you behave too obnoxiously toward us.

If Your Contribution Is Rejected

If we reject your contribution, it means only that we do not consider it suitable for our project in the form it was submitted. It is not personal. If you ask civilly, we will be happy to discuss it with you and help you understand why it was rejected, and if possible improve it so we can accept it.

Revision History

• 0.1, 2011–11–18: Initial draft.
• 0.2, 2011–11–18: Added “If Your Contribution Is Rejected” section.
• 0.3, 2011–11–19: Added “irrevocably” to “we can use” and changed “it” to “your contribution” in the “if rejected” section. Thanks to Patrick Maupin.

How can I contribute?

Feature requests

We're always looking for suggestions to improve our application. If you have a suggestion to improve an existing feature, or would like to suggest a completely new feature for KeePassXC, please use the issue tracker on GitHub.

Bug reports

Our software isn't always perfect, but we strive to always improve our work. You may file bug reports in the issue tracker.

Before submitting a bug report, check if the problem has already been reported. Please refrain from opening a duplicate issue. If you want to add further information to an existing issue, simply add a comment on that issue.

Discuss with the team

As with feature requests, you can talk to the KeePassXC team about bugs, new features, other issues and pull requests on the dedicated issue tracker, or in the IRC channel on Freenode (#keepassxc-dev on irc.freenode.net, or use a webchat link).

Your first code contribution

Unsure where to begin contributing to KeePassXC? You can start by looking through these beginner and help-wanted issues:

• Beginner issues – issues which should only require a few lines of code, and a test or two.
• 'Help wanted' issues – issues which should be a bit more involved than beginner issues.

Both issue lists are sorted by total number of comments. While not perfect, looking at the number of comments on an issue can give a general idea of how much an impact a given change will have.

Pull requests

Along with our desire to hear your feedback and suggestions, we're also interested in accepting direct assistance in the form of code.

All pull requests must comply with the above requirements and with the styleguides.

Translations

Translations are managed on Transifex which offers a web interface. Please join an existing language team or request a new one if there is none.

Styleguides

Git branch strategy

The Branch Strategy is based on git-flow-lite.

• master – points to the latest public release
• develop – points to the development of the next release, contains tested and reviewed code
• feature/[name] – points to a branch with a new feature, one which is candidate for merge into develop (subject to rebase)
• hotfix/[id]-[description] – points to a branch with a fix for a particular issue ID

Git commit messages

• Use the present tense ("Add feature" not "Added feature")
• Use the imperative mood ("Move cursor to…" not "Moves cursor to…")
• Limit the first line to 72 characters or less
• Reference issues and pull requests liberally
• When only changing documentation, include [ci skip] in the commit description
• Consider starting the commit message with an applicable emoji:
  • 📝 :memo: when writing docs
  • 🐧 :penguin: when fixing something on Linux
  • 🍎 :apple: when fixing something on macOS
  • 🏁 :checkered_flag: when fixing something on Windows
  • 🐛 :bug: when fixing a bug
  • 🔥 :fire: when removing code or files
  • 💚 :green_heart: when fixing the CI build
  • ✅ :white_check_mark: when adding tests
  • 🔒 :lock: when dealing with security

Coding styleguide

This project follows the Qt Coding Style. All submissions are expected to follow this style.

In particular, code must stick to the following rules:

Naming convention

lowerCamelCase

For names made of only one word, the first letter should be lowercase. For names made of multiple concatenated words, the first letter of the whole is lowercase, and the first letter of each subsequent word is capitalized.

Indention

For C++ files (.cpp .h): 4 spaces
For Qt-UI files (.ui): 2 spaces

Pointers

int* count;

Braces

if (condition) {
    doSomething();
}

void ExampleClass::exampleFunction()
{
    doSomething();
}

Switch statement

switch (a) {
case 1:
    doSomething();
    break;

default:
    doSomethingElse();
    break;
}

Member variables

Use prefix: m_*

Example: m_variable

GUI widget names

Widget names must be related to the desired program behavior, and preferably end with the widget's classname.

Example: <widget class="QCheckBox" name="rememberCheckBox">