Spacemacs is a volunteer effort. We encourage you to pitch in. The community makes Spacemacs what it is. We have a few guidelines, which we ask all contributors to follow.
You can only consider reading the sections relevant to what you are going to do:
- Asking for help if you are about to open an issue to ask a question.
- Reporting issues if you are about to open a new issue.
- Contributing code if you are about to send a Pull-Request.
Thanks! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
If you want to ask an usage question, be sure to look first into some places as it may hold the answer:- The FAQ. Some of the most frequently asked questions are answered there.
- The documentation. It’s the general documentation of Spacemacs.
- You may also read the
README.orgof the relevant layer(s).
If your question is not answered there, then please come into our gitter chat to
discuss it with us
- Check that the issue has not already been reported.
- This can be achieved by searching keywords on the issues tracker.
- Check that the issue has not been fixed in the
developversion of Spacemacs.- This can be achieved by running Spacemacs on the
developbranch and trying to reproduce the bug here. You can also check at the source code to see if it has been changed/corrected.
- This can be achieved by running Spacemacs on the
- Try to use a clear title, and describe your problem with complete sentences. See also How to make a great bug report in the wiki.
- Include the following information in your issue:
- The output of
SPC h d s(M-m h d sin Emacs style), which gives the versions information about your installation. - If relevant, include the mode in which the problem arise (e.g. javascript
files,
org-mode, etc…). - If possible, try to include details on how to reproduce it, like a step by step guide.
- The output of
The license is GPLv3 for all parts specific to Spacemacs, this includes:
- The initialization and core files
- All the layer files.
For files not belonging to Spacemacs like local packages and libraries, refer to the header file. Those files should not have an empty header, we may not accept code without a proper header file.
Spacemacs is based on conventions, mainly for naming functions, keybindings definition and writing documentation. Please read the CONVENTIONS.org file before your first contribution to get to know them.
Submit your contribution against the develop branch. You should not use
your master branch to modify Spacemacs, this branch is considered to be
read-only.
You may want to read our beginner’s guide for Pull Requests.
PR = Pull-Request
- Branch from
develop - One topic per PR
- One commit per PR
- If you have several commits on different topics, close the PR and create one PR per topic
- If you still have several commits, squash them into only one commit
- Rebase your PR branch on top of upstream
developbefore submitting the PR
Those PRs are usually cherry-picked.
- Squash only the commits with uninteresting changes like typos, syntax fixes, etc… and keep the important and isolated steps in different commits.
Those PRs are merged and explicitly not fast-forwarded.
Write commit messages according to adapted Tim Pope’s guidelines:
- Use present tense and write in the imperative: “Fix bug”, not “fixed bug” or “fixes bug”.
- Start with a capitalized, short (72 characters or less) summary, followed by a blank line.
- If necessary, add one or more paragraphs with details, wrapped at 72 characters.
- Separate paragraphs by blank lines.
This is a model commit message:
Capitalized, short (72 chars or less) summary
More detailed explanatory text, if necessary. Wrap it to about 72
characters or so. In some contexts, the first line is treated as the
subject of an email and the rest of the text as the body. The blank
line separating the summary from the body is critical (unless you omit
the body entirely); tools like rebase can get confused if you run the
two together.
Write your commit message in the imperative: "Fix bug" and not "Fixed bug"
or "Fixes bug." This convention matches up with commit messages generated
by commands like git merge and git revert.
Further paragraphs come after blank lines.
- Bullet points are okay, too
- Typically a hyphen or asterisk is used for the bullet, followed by a
single space, with blank lines in between, but conventions vary here
- Use a hanging indent
Git Commit and Magit provide Emacs mode for Git commit messages, which helps you to comply to these guidelines.
Please read the layers documentation first.
It is recommended to use the configuration-layer/create-layer command in order
to create a layer, as it will take care of using the files templates and will
also create the file headers correctly.
Contributed configuration layers are stored in the layers/ folder. The
layers/ folder also contains categories prefixed with + to put your layers
in. For example a layer for a language would go in the layers/+lang/ folder.
Layer with no associated configuration will be rejected. For instance a layer
with just a package and a hook can be easily replaced by the usage of the
variable dotspacemacs-additional-packages.
The file header for elisp files should look like the following template:
;;; FILENAME --- NAME Layer packages File for Spacemacs ;; ;; Copyright (c) 2012-2017 Sylvain Benner & Contributors ;; ;; Author: YOUR_NAME <YOUR_EMAIL> ;; URL: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ;; ;; This file is not part of GNU Emacs. ;; ;;; License: GPLv3
You should replace FILENAME by the name of the file (e.g. packages.el)
and NAME by the name of the layer you are creating, don’t forget to replace
YOUR_NAME and YOUR_EMAIL also. Some files already have a template inside
core/templates/, so look in there first.
Note that if you use configuration-layer/create-layer, spacemacs will prepare
files and headers for you, and for free 😄 !
In the files header, change the default author name (Sylvain Benner) to your
name.
If you are contributing to an already existing layer, you should not modify any header file.
Keybindings are an important part of spacemacs.
First if you want to have some personal keybindings, you can freely bind them
inside the SPC o and SPC m o prefixes which are reserved for the user. This
can be done from the dotspacemacs/user-config function of your .spacemacs
file and don’t require any contribution to Spacemacs.
If you think it worth contributing a new key bindings then be sure to read the CONVENTIONS.org file to find the best key bindings, then create a Pull-Request with your changes.
ALWAYS document your new keybindings or keybindings changes inside the
relevant documentation file. It should be the layer’s README.org file for
layer’s keybindings, or DOCUMENTATION.org for general Spacemacs key
bindings.
The startup banner is by default the Spacemacs logo but there are also ASCII
banners available in the directory core/banners/.
If you have some ASCII skills you can submit your artwork!
You are free to choose a reasonable height size but the width size should be around 75 characters.
Tests live in the tests/ folder, with a folder structure corresponding to the
rest of the repository.
To run tests locally, navigate to the relevant subfolder and run make.
Spacemacs uses Travis CI to perform more comprehensive testing, where each testable layer is enabled in turn.
To add tests for a layer, do the following:
- Create a subfolder of
tests/corresponding to the layer you want to test. - Write a file called
dotspacemacs.elin that folder. It should be a minimal dotfile that enables the layer in question (and other layers it may depend on). - Write a number of files with tests. Please try to separate unit and functional tests. Look at existing tests for clues.
- Write a
Makefilein that folder. It should define three variables.LOAD_FILES- a list of additional files to load before testing (relative
to the root Spacemacs folder). This should typically be
init.el. UNIT_TEST_FILES- a list of unit test files in the current folder.
FUNC_TEST_FILES- a list of functional test files in the current folder.
See existing tests for examples.
TEST_DIR := $(shell dirname $(realpath $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST)))) LOAD_FILES = ... UNIT_TEST_FILES = ... FUNC_TEST_FILES = ... include ../../spacemacs.mk
- Add the new test to list of tests in
travis/run_build.sh.
This CONTRIBUTING.org file is partially based on the Rails Contribution
guidelines and Flycheck Contribution guidelines.