Newer
Older
# Contributing
The `Polkadot SDK` project is an **OPENISH Open Source Project**
## What?
Individuals making significant and valuable contributions are given commit-access to the project. Contributions are done
via pull-requests and need to be approved by the maintainers.
## Rules
There are a few basic ground-rules for contributors (including the maintainer(s) of the project):
1. **No `--force` pushes** or modifying the master branch history in any way. If you need to rebase, ensure you do it in
your own repo. No rewriting of the history after the code has been shared (e.g. through a Pull-Request).
2. **Non-master branches**, prefixed with a short name moniker (e.g. `gav-my-feature`) must be used for ongoing work.
3. **All modifications** must be made in a **pull-request** to solicit feedback from other contributors.
4. A pull-request **must not be merged until CI** has finished successfully.
5. Contributors should adhere to the [house coding style](./STYLE_GUIDE.md).
6. Contributors should adhere to the [house documenting style](./DOCUMENTATION_GUIDELINES.md), when applicable.
## Merge Process
### In General
* A Pull Request (PR) needs to be reviewed and approved by project maintainers.
* If a change does not alter any logic (e.g. comments, dependencies, docs), then it may be tagged `A1-insubstantial` and
merged faster.
* No PR should be merged until all reviews' comments are addressed.
The set of labels and their description can be found [here](https://paritytech.github.io/labels/doc_polkadot-sdk.html).
1. Please use our [Pull Request Template](./PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md) and make sure all relevant information is
reflected in your PR.
2. Please tag each PR with minimum one `T*` label. The respective `T*` labels should signal the component that was
changed, they are also used by downstream users to track changes and to include these changes properly into their own
releases.
3. If you’re still working on your PR, please submit as “Draft”. Once a PR is ready for review change the status to
“Open”, so that the maintainers get to review your PR. Generally PRs should sit for 48 hours in order to garner
feedback. It may be merged before if all relevant parties had a look at it.
4. With respect to auditing, please see [AUDIT.md](../AUDIT.md). In general, merging to master can happen independent of
audit.
5. PRs will be able to be merged once all reviewers' comments are addressed and CI is successful.
**Noting breaking changes:** When breaking APIs, the PR description should mention what was changed alongside some
examples on how to change the code to make it work/compile. It should also mention potential storage migrations and if
they require some special setup aside adding it to the list of migrations in the runtime.
When reviewing a pull request, the end-goal is to suggest useful changes to the author. Reviews should finish with
approval unless there are issues that would result in:
1. Buggy behavior.
2. Undue maintenance burden.
3. Breaking with house coding style.
4. Pessimization (i.e. reduction of speed as measured in the projects benchmarks).
5. Feature reduction (i.e. it removes some aspect of functionality that a significant minority of users rely on).
6. Uselessness (i.e. it does not strictly add a feature or fix a known issue).
The reviewers are also responsible to check:
* if the PR description is well written to facilitate integration, in case it contains breaking changes.
* the PR has an impact on docs.
**Reviews may not be used as an effective veto for a PR because**:
1. There exists a somewhat cleaner/better/faster way of accomplishing the same feature/fix.
2. It does not fit well with some other contributors' longer-term vision for the project.
## `PRDoc`
All Pull Requests must contain proper title & description, as described in [Pull Request
Template](./PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md). Moreover, all pull requests must have a proper `prdoc` file attached.
Some Pull Requests can be exempt of `prdoc` documentation, those must be labelled with
[`R0-silent`](https://github.com/paritytech/labels/blob/main/ruled_labels/specs_polkadot-sdk.yaml#L89-L91).
Non "silent" PRs must come with documentation in the form of a `.prdoc` file.
## Helping out
We use [labels](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/labels) to manage PRs and issues and communicate state of a
PR. Please familiarise yourself with them. Best way to get started is to a pick a ticket tagged
[easy](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AD0-easy) or
[medium](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AD1-medium) and get going.
Alternatively, look out for issues tagged
[mentor](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AC1-mentor) and get in contact
with the mentor offering their support on that larger task.
****
### Issues
If what you are looking for is an answer rather than proposing a new feature or fix, search
[https://substrate.stackexchange.com](https://substrate.stackexchange.com/) to see if an post already exists, and ask if
not. Please do not file support issues here.
Before opening a new issue search to see if a similar one already exists and leave a comment that you also experienced
this issue or add your specifics that are related to an existing issue.
Please label issues with the following labels (only relevant for maintainer):
1. `I*` issue severity and type. EXACTLY ONE REQUIRED.
2. `D*` issue difficulty, suggesting the level of complexity this issue has. AT MOST ONE ALLOWED.
3. `T*` Issue topic. MULTIPLE ALLOWED.
## Releases
Declaring formal releases remains the prerogative of the project maintainer(s). See [RELEASE.md](../RELEASE.md).
## UI tests
UI tests are used for macros to ensure that the output of a macro doesn’t change and is in the expected format. These UI
tests are sensible to any changes in the macro generated code or to switching the rust stable version. The tests are
only run when the `RUN_UI_TESTS` environment variable is set. So, when the CI is for example complaining about failing
UI tests and it is expected that they fail these tests need to be executed locally. To simplify the updating of the UI
test output there is a script
* `./scripts/update-ui-tests.sh` to update the tests for a current rust version locally
* `./scripts/update-ui-tests.sh 1.70` # to update the tests for a specific rust version locally
Or if you have opened PR and you're member of `paritytech` - you can use command-bot to run the tests for you in CI:
* `bot update-ui` - will run the tests for the current rust version
* `bot update-ui latest --rust_version=1.70.0` - will run the tests for the specified rust version
* `bot update-ui latest -v CMD_IMAGE=paritytech/ci-unified:bullseye-1.70.0-2023-05-23 --rust_version=1.70.0` - will run
the tests for the specified rust version and specified image
## Feature Propagation
We use [zepter](https://github.com/ggwpez/zepter) to enforce features are propagated between crates correctly.
## Command Bot
If you're member of **paritytech** org - you can use command-bot to run various of common commands in CI:
Start with comment in PR: `bot help` to see the list of available commands.
## Deprecating code
When deprecating and removing code you need to be mindful of how this could impact downstream developers. In order to
mitigate this impact, it is recommended to adhere to the steps outlined in the [Deprecation
Checklist](./DEPRECATION_CHECKLIST.md).