atom/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Atom

:+1:🎉 First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! 🎉👍

The following is a set of guidelines for contributing to Atom and its packages, which are hosted in the Atom Organization on GitHub. These are just guidelines, not rules, use your best judgment and feel free to propose changes to this document in a pull request.

This project adheres to the Contributor Covenant 1.2. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to atom@github.com.

Table Of Contents

• Submitting Issues
• Pull Requests
• Git Commit Messages
• CoffeeScript Styleguide
• Specs Styleguide
• Documentation Styleguide
• Issue and Pull Request Labels

Submitting Issues

• You can create an issue here, but before doing that please read the notes below on debugging and submitting issues, and include as many details as possible with your report.
• Check the debugging guide for tips on debugging. You might be able to find the cause of the problem and fix things yourself.
• Include the version of Atom you are using and the OS.
• Include screenshots and animated GIFs whenever possible; they are immensely helpful.
• Include the behavior you expected and other places you've seen that behavior such as Emacs, vi, Xcode, etc.
• Check the dev tools (alt-cmd-i) for errors to include. If the dev tools are open before the error is triggered, a full stack trace for the error will be logged. If you can reproduce the error, use this approach to get the full stack trace and include it in the issue.
• On Mac, check Console.app for stack traces to include if reporting a crash.
• Perform a cursory search to see if a similar issue has already been submitted.
• Please setup a profile picture to make yourself recognizable and so we can all get to know each other better.

Package Repositories

This is the repository for the core Atom editor only. Atom comes bundled with many packages and themes that are stored in other repos under the Atom organization such as tabs, find-and-replace, language-javascript, and atom-light-ui.

If your issue is related to a specific package, open an issue on that package's issue tracker. If you're unsure which package is causing your problem or if you're having an issue with Atom core, open an issue on this repository.

For more information on how to work with Atom's official packages, see Contributing to Atom Packages

Pull Requests

• Include screenshots and animated GIFs in your pull request whenever possible.
• Follow the CoffeeScript, JavaScript, and CSS styleguides.
• Include thoughtfully-worded, well-structured Jasmine specs in the ./spec folder. Run them using apm test. See the Specs Styleguide below.
• Document new code based on the Documentation Styleguide
• End files with a newline.
• Place requires in the following order:
  • Built in Node Modules (such as path)
  • Built in Atom and Atom Shell Modules (such as atom, shell)
  • Local Modules (using relative paths)
• Place class properties in the following order:
  • Class methods and properties (methods starting with a @)
  • Instance methods and properties
• Avoid platform-dependent code:
  • Use require('fs-plus').getHomeDirectory() to get the home directory.
  • Use path.join() to concatenate filenames.
  • Use os.tmpdir() rather than /tmp when you need to reference the temporary directory.
• Using a plain return when returning explicitly at the end of a function.
  • Not return null, return undefined, null, or undefined

Git Commit Messages

• Use the present tense ("Add feature" not "Added feature")
• Use the imperative mood ("Move cursor to..." not "Moves cursor to...")
• Limit the first line to 72 characters or less
• Reference issues and pull requests liberally
• Consider starting the commit message with an applicable emoji:
  • 🎨 :art: when improving the format/structure of the code
  • 🐎 :racehorse: when improving performance
  • 🚱 :non-potable_water: when plugging memory leaks
  • 📝 :memo: when writing docs
  • 🐧 :penguin: when fixing something on Linux
  • 🍎 :apple: when fixing something on Mac OS
  • 🏁 :checkered_flag: when fixing something on Windows
  • 🐛 :bug: when fixing a bug
  • 🔥 :fire: when removing code or files
  • 💚 :green_heart: when fixing the CI build
  • ✅ :white_check_mark: when adding tests
  • 🔒 :lock: when dealing with security
  • ⬆️ :arrow_up: when upgrading dependencies
  • ⬇️ :arrow_down: when downgrading dependencies
  • 👕 :shirt: when removing linter warnings

CoffeeScript Styleguide

• Set parameter defaults without spaces around the equal sign
  • clear = (count=1) -> instead of clear = (count = 1) ->
• Use spaces around operators
  • count + 1 instead of count+1
• Use spaces after commas (unless separated by newlines)
• Use parentheses if it improves code clarity.
• Prefer alphabetic keywords to symbolic keywords:
  • a is b instead of a == b
• Avoid spaces inside the curly-braces of hash literals:
  • {a: 1, b: 2} instead of { a: 1, b: 2 }
• Include a single line of whitespace between methods.
• Capitalize initialisms and acronyms in names, except for the first word, which should be lower-case:
  • getURI instead of getUri
  • uriToOpen instead of URIToOpen
• Use slice() to copy an array
• Add an explicit return when your function ends with a for/while loop and you don't want it to return a collected array.
• Use this instead of a standalone @
  • return this instead of return @

Specs Styleguide

• Include thoughtfully-worded, well-structured Jasmine specs in the ./spec folder.
• treat describe as a noun or situation.
• treat it as a statement about state or how an operation changes state.

Example

describe 'a dog', ->
 it 'barks', ->
 # spec here
 describe 'when the dog is happy', ->
  it 'wags its tail', ->
  # spec here

Documentation Styleguide

• Use AtomDoc.
• Use Markdown.
• Reference methods and classes in markdown with the custom {} notation:
  • Reference classes with {ClassName}
  • Reference instance methods with {ClassName::methodName}
  • Reference class methods with {ClassName.methodName}

Example

# Public: Disable the package with the given name.
#
# * `name`    The {String} name of the package to disable.
# * `options` (optional) The {Object} with disable options (default: {}):
#   * `trackTime`     A {Boolean}, `true` to track the amount of time taken.
#   * `ignoreErrors`  A {Boolean}, `true` to catch and ignore errors thrown.
# * `callback` The {Function} to call after the package has been disabled.
#
# Returns `undefined`.
disablePackage: (name, options, callback) ->

Issue and Pull Request Labels

This section lists the labels we use to help us track and manage issues and pull requests. Most labels are used across the core atom/atom repository and all package repositories, but some are specific for atom/atom.

GitHub search makes it easy to use labels for finding groups of issues or pull requests you're interested in. For example, you might be interested in open issues across atom/atom and all Atom-owned packages which are labeled as bugs, but still need to be reliably reproduced or perhaps open pull requests in atom/atom which haven't been reviewed yet. To help you find issues and pull requests, each label is listed with search links for finding open items with that label in atom/atom only and also across all Atom repositories. We encourage you to read about other search filters which will help you write more focused queries.

The labels are loosely grouped by their purpose, but it's not required that every issue has a label from every group or that an issue can't have more than one label from the same group.

Please open an issue on atom/atom if you have suggestions for new labels, and if you notice some labels are missing on some repositories, then please open an issue on that repository.

Type of Issue and Issue State

Label name	atom/atom 🔎	atom‑org 🔎	Description
enhancement	search	search	A feature request.
bug	search	search	A confirmed bug or issue very likely to be a bug.
question	search	search	A question more than a bug report or feature request (e.g. how do I do X).
feedback	search	search	General feedback more than a bug report or feature request.
help-wanted	search	search	The Atom core team would appreciate help from the community in resolving these issues.
beginner	search	search	Less complex issue which would be a good first issue to work on for users who want to contribute to Atom.
more-information-needed	search	search	More information needs to be collected about the problem or feature request (e.g. steps to reproduce).
needs-reproduction	search	search	Likely a bug, but hasn't been reliably reproduced.
triage-help-needed	search	search	Help is needed to triage this issue, normally from the Atom core team, e.g. to determine if it's a bug or not.
blocked	search	search	Issue is blocked on another issue.
duplicate	search	search	Issue is a duplicate of another issue.
wontfix	search	search	The Atom core team decided not to fix this issue for now, either because it's working as intended or for some other reason.
invalid	search	search	Issue isn't valid (e.g. user error).
package-idea	search	search	A feature request which might be a good candidate for a new package, instead of extending Atom or a core Atom package.
wrong-repo	search	search	Issue was reported on the wrong repository (e.g. a bug related to a package was reported on atom/atom).

Topic Categories

Label name	atom/atom 🔎	atom‑org 🔎	Description
windows	search	search	Related to Atom running on Windows.
linux	search	search	Related to Atom running on Linux.
mac	search	search	Related to Atom running on OSX.
documentation	search	search	Related to any type of documentation (e.g. API documentation and the flight manual).
performance	search	search	Related to performance.
security	search	search	Related to security.
ui	search	search	Related to visual design.
api	search	search	Related to Atom's public APIs.
uncaught-exception	search	search	Issues created for uncaught exceptions thrown, normally from the Notifications package.
crash	search	search	Problems which cause Atom to crash.
auto-indent	search	search	Related to auto-indenting text.
encoding	search	search	Related to character encoding.
network	search	search	Related to network problems or working with remote files (e.g. on network drives).
git	search	search	Related to Git functionality (e.g. problems with gitignore files or with showing the correct file status).

atom/atom Topic Categories

Label name	atom/atom 🔎	atom‑org 🔎	Description
editor-rendering	search	search	Related to language-independent aspects of rendering text (e.g. scrolling, soft wrap, and font rendering).
build-error	search	search	Related to problems with building Atom from source.
error-from-pathwatcher	search	search	Related to errors thrown by the pathwatcher library.
error-from-save	search	search	Related to errors thrown when saving files.
error-from-open	search	search	Related to errors thrown when opening files.
installer	search	search	Related to the Atom installers for different OSes.
auto-updater	search	search	Related to the auto-updater for different OSes.
deprecation-help	search	search	Issues for helping package authors remove usage of deprecated APIs in packages.

Core Team Project Management

Label name	atom/atom search	atom‑org 🔎	Description
in-progress	search	search	Tasks which the Atom core team is working on currently.
on-deck	search	search	Tasks which the Atom core team plans to work on next.
shipping	search	search	Tasks which the Atom core team completed and will be released in one of the next releases.
post-1.0-roadmap	search	search	Atom core team's roadmap post 1.0.0 version.
atom	search	search	Topics discussed for prioritization at next meeting of Atom core team members.

Pull Request Labels

Label name	atom/atom pull requests	atom‑org pull requests	Description
work-in-progress	search	search	The author is still working on the pull request, more changes will follow.
needs-review	search	search	Needs code review, and also approval from maintainers or Atom core team.
under-review	search	search	Pull request is being reviewed by a maintainer or Atom core team.
requires-changes	search	search	Needs to be updated based on review comments and then reviewed again.
needs-testing	search	search	Should be tested manually by running the version of Atom in this branch.