1 # How to contribute # 2 3 We'd love to accept your patches and contributions to this project. There are 4 a just a few small guidelines you need to follow. 5 6 7 ## Contributor License Agreement ## 8 9 Contributions to any Google project must be accompanied by a Contributor 10 License Agreement. This is not a copyright **assignment**, it simply gives 11 Google permission to use and redistribute your contributions as part of the 12 project. 13 14 * If you are an individual writing original source code and you're sure you 15 own the intellectual property, then you'll need to sign an [individual 16 CLA][]. 17 18 * If you work for a company that wants to allow you to contribute your work, 19 then you'll need to sign a [corporate CLA][]. 20 21 You generally only need to submit a CLA once, so if you've already submitted 22 one (even if it was for a different project), you probably don't need to do it 23 again. 24 25 [individual CLA]: https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/individual 26 [corporate CLA]: https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/corporate 27 28 29 ## Submitting a patch ## 30 31 1. It's generally best to start by opening a new issue describing the bug or 32 feature you're intending to fix. Even if you think it's relatively minor, 33 it's helpful to know what people are working on. Mention in the initial 34 issue that you are planning to work on that bug or feature so that it can 35 be assigned to you. 36 37 1. Follow the normal process of [forking][] the project, and setup a new 38 branch to work in. It's important that each group of changes be done in 39 separate branches in order to ensure that a pull request only includes the 40 commits related to that bug or feature. 41 42 1. Any significant changes should almost always be accompanied by tests. The 43 project already has good test coverage, so look at some of the existing 44 tests if you're unsure how to go about it. 45 46 1. All contributions must be licensed Apache 2.0 and all files must have 47 a copy of the boilerplate licence comment (can be copied from an existing 48 file. Files should be formatted according to Google's [java style guide][]. 49 50 1. Do your best to have [well-formed commit messages][] for each change. 51 This provides consistency throughout the project, and ensures that commit 52 messages are able to be formatted properly by various git tools. 53 54 1. Finally, push the commits to your fork and submit a [pull request][]. 55 56 [forking]: https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo 57 [java style guide]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javaguide.html 58 [well-formed commit messages]: http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html 59 [pull request]: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request 60 61 62
