1# How to contribute 2 3We definitely welcome your patches and contributions to gRPC! Please read the gRPC 4organization's [governance rules](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-community/blob/master/governance.md) 5and [contribution guidelines](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-community/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) before proceeding. 6 7If you are new to github, please start by reading [Pull Request 8howto](https://help.github.com/articles/about-pull-requests/) 9 10If you are looking for features to work on, please filter the issues list with the label ["disposition/help wanted"](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/issues?q=label%3A%22disposition%2Fhelp+wanted%22). 11Please note that some of these feature requests might have been closed in the past as a result of them being marked as stale due to there being no activity, but these are still valid feature requests. 12 13## Legal requirements 14 15In order to protect both you and ourselves, you will need to sign the 16[Contributor License 17Agreement](https://identity.linuxfoundation.org/projects/cncf). 18 19## Cloning the repository 20 21Before starting any development work you will need a local copy of the gRPC repository. 22Please follow the instructions in [Building gRPC C++: Clone the repository](BUILDING.md#clone-the-repository-including-submodules). 23 24## Building & Running tests 25 26Different languages use different build systems. To hide the complexity 27of needing to build with many different build systems, a portable python 28script that unifies the experience of building and testing gRPC in different 29languages and on different platforms is provided. 30 31To build gRPC in the language of choice (e.g. `c++`, `csharp`, `php`, `python`, `ruby`, ...) 32- Prepare your development environment based on language-specific instructions in `src/YOUR-LANGUAGE` directory. 33- The language-specific instructions might involve installing C/C++ prerequisites listed in 34 [Building gRPC C++: Prerequisites](BUILDING.md#pre-requisites). This is because gRPC implementations 35 in this repository are using the native gRPC "core" library internally. 36- Run 37 ``` 38 python tools/run_tests/run_tests.py -l YOUR_LANGUAGE --build_only 39 ``` 40- To also run all the unit tests after building 41 ``` 42 python tools/run_tests/run_tests.py -l YOUR_LANGUAGE 43 ``` 44 45You can also run `python tools/run_tests/run_tests.py --help` to discover useful command line flags supported. For more details, 46see [tools/run_tests](tools/run_tests) where you will also find guidance on how to run various other test suites (e.g. interop tests, benchmarks). 47 48## Generated project files 49 50To ease maintenance of language- and platform- specific build systems, many 51projects files are generated using templates and should not be edited by hand. 52Run `tools/buildgen/generate_projects.sh` to regenerate. See 53[templates](templates) for details. 54 55As a rule of thumb, if you see the "sanity tests" failing you've most likely 56edited generated files or you didn't regenerate the projects properly (or your 57code formatting doesn't match our code style). 58 59## Guidelines for Pull Requests 60How to get your contributions merged smoothly and quickly. 61 62- Create **small PRs** that are narrowly focused on **addressing a single 63 concern**. We often times receive PRs that are trying to fix several things 64 at a time, but only one fix is considered acceptable, nothing gets merged and 65 both author's & review's time is wasted. Create more PRs to address different 66 concerns and everyone will be happy. 67 68- For speculative changes, consider opening an issue and discussing it first. 69 If you are suggesting a behavioral or API change, consider starting with a 70 [gRFC proposal](https://github.com/grpc/proposal). 71 72- Provide a good **PR description** as a record of **what** change is being made 73 and **why** it was made. Link to a GitHub issue if it exists. 74 75- Don't fix code style and formatting unless you are already changing that line 76 to address an issue. PRs with irrelevant changes won't be merged. If you do 77 want to fix formatting or style, do that in a separate PR. 78 79- If you are adding a new file, make sure it has the copyright message template 80 at the top as a comment. You can copy over the message from an existing file 81 and update the year. 82 83- Unless your PR is trivial, you should expect there will be reviewer comments 84 that you'll need to address before merging. We expect you to be reasonably 85 responsive to those comments, otherwise the PR will be closed after 2-3 weeks 86 of inactivity. 87 88- If you have non-trivial contributions, please consider adding an entry to [the 89 AUTHORS file](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/AUTHORS) listing the 90 copyright holder for the contribution (yourself, if you are signing the 91 individual CLA, or your company, for corporate CLAs) in the same PR as your 92 contribution. This needs to be done only once, for each company, or 93 individual. Please keep this file in alphabetical order. 94 95- Maintain **clean commit history** and use **meaningful commit messages**. 96 PRs with messy commit history are difficult to review and won't be merged. 97 Use `rebase -i upstream/master` to curate your commit history and/or to 98 bring in latest changes from master (but avoid rebasing in the middle of 99 a code review). 100 101- Keep your PR up to date with upstream/master (if there are merge conflicts, 102 we can't really merge your change). 103 104- If you are regenerating the projects using 105 `tools/buildgen/generate_projects.sh`, make changes to generated files a 106 separate commit with commit message `regenerate projects`. Mixing changes 107 to generated and hand-written files make your PR difficult to review. 108 Note that running this script requires the installation of Python packages 109 `pyyaml` and `mako` (typically installed using `pip`) as well as a recent 110 version of [`go`](https://golang.org/doc/install#install). 111 112- **All tests need to be passing** before your change can be merged. 113 We recommend you **run tests locally** before creating your PR to catch 114 breakages early on (see [tools/run_tests](tools/run_tests). Ultimately, the 115 green signal will be provided by our testing infrastructure. The reviewer 116 will help you if there are test failures that seem not related to the change 117 you are making. 118 119- Exceptions to the rules can be made if there's a compelling reason for doing 120 so. 121 122## Obtaining Commit Access 123We grant Commit Access to contributors based on the following criteria: 124* Sustained contribution to the gRPC project. 125* Deep understanding of the areas contributed to, and good consideration of various reliability, usability and performance tradeoffs. 126* Contributions demonstrate that obtaining Commit Access will significantly reduce friction for the contributors or others. 127 128In addition to submitting PRs, a Contributor with Commit Access can: 129* Review PRs and merge once other checks and criteria pass. 130* Triage bugs and PRs and assign appropriate labels and reviewers. 131 132### Obtaining Commit Access without Code Contributions 133The [gRPC organization](https://github.com/grpc) is comprised of multiple repositories and commit access is usually restricted to one or more of these repositories. Some repositories such as the [grpc.github.io](https://github.com/grpc/grpc.github.io/) do not have code, but the same principle of sustained, high quality contributions, with a good understanding of the fundamentals, apply. 134 135