wlroots/CONTRIBUTING.md

# Contributing to wlroots

Contributing just involves sending a pull request. You will probably be more
successful with your contribution if you visit the [IRC
channel](irc://chat.freenode.net/sway-devel) upfront and discuss your plans.

## Pull Requests

If you already have your own pull request habits, feel free to use them. If you
don't, however, allow me to make a suggestion: feature branches pulled from
upstream. Try this:

1. Fork wlroots
2. `git clone https://github.com/username/wlroots && cd wlroots`
3. `git remote add upstream https://github.com/SirCmpwn/wlroots`

You only need to do this once. You're never going to use your fork's master
branch. Instead, when you start working on a feature, do this:

1. `git fetch upstream`
2. `git checkout -b add-so-and-so-feature upstream/master`
3. Add and commit your changes
4. `git push -u origin add-so-and-so-feature`
5. Make a pull request from your feature branch

## Commit Messages

Please strive to write good commit messages. Here's some guidelines to follow:

The first line should be limited to 50 characters and should be a sentence that
completes the thought [When applied, this commit will...] *"Implement
cmd_move"* or *"Fix #742"* or *"Improve performance of arrange_windows on ARM"*
or similar.

The subsequent lines should be separated from the subject line by a single
blank line, and include optional details. In this you can give justification
for the change, [reference Github
issues](https://help.github.com/articles/closing-issues-via-commit-messages/),
or explain some of the subtler details of your patch. This is important because
when someone finds a line of code they don't understand later, they can use the
`git blame` command to find out what the author was thinking when they wrote
it. It's also easier to review your pull requests if they're separated into
logical commits that have good commit messages and justify themselves in the
extended commit description.

As a good rule of thumb, anything you might put into the pull request
description on Github is probably fair game for going into the extended commit
message as well.

See [here](https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/) for more details.

## Coding Style

wlroots is written in C with a style similar to the [kernel
style](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst), but
with a few notable differences.

Try to keep your code conforming to C11 and POSIX as much as possible, and do
not use GNU extensions.

### Brackets

Brackets always go on the same line, including in functions.  
Always include brackets for if/while/for, even if it's a single statement.
```c
void function() {
	if (condition1) {
		do_thing1();
	}

	if (condition2) {
		do_thing2();
	} else {
		do_thing3();
	}
}
```

### Indentation

Indentations are a single tab.

For long lines that need to be broken, the continuation line should be indented
with an additional tab.  
If the line being broken is opening a new block (functions, if, while, etc.),
the continuation line should be indented with two tabs, so they can't be
misread as being part of the block.
```c
really_long_function(argument1, argument2, ...,
	argument3, argument4);

if (condition1 && condition2 && ...
		condition3 && condition4) {
	do_thing();
}
```

Try to break the line in the place which you think is the most appropriate.


### Line Length

Try to keep your lines under 80 columns, but you can go up to 100 if it
improves readability.

### Names

Function and type names should be prefixed with `wlr_submodule_` (e.g. `struct
wlr_drm_plane`, `wlr_output_set_cursor`).  For static functions and types local
to a file, the names chosen aren't as important.

### Construction/Destruction Functions

For functions that are responsible for constructing and destructing an object,
they should be written as a pair of one of two forms:
* `init`/`finish`: These initialize/deinitialize a type, but are **NOT**
responsible for allocating it. They should accept a pointer to some
pre-allocated memory (e.g. a member of a struct).
* `create`/`destroy`: These also initialize/deinitialize, but will return a
pointer to a `malloc`ed chunk of memory, and will `free` it in `destroy`.

A destruction function should always be able to accept a NULL pointer or an
otherwise uninitialised value and exit cleanly; this simplifies error handling
a lot.

### Error Codes

For functions not returning a value, they should return a (stdbool.h) bool to
indicated if they succeeded or not.

### Macros

Try to keep the use of macros to a minimum, especially if a function can do the
job.  If you do need to use them, try to keep them close to where they're being
used and `#undef` them after.

## Meson Coding Style

The Meson style is similar to the C style, but indentations are 2 spaces.