1# How to contribute
2
3etcd is Apache 2.0 licensed and accepts contributions via GitHub pull requests. This document outlines some of the conventions on commit message formatting, contact points for developers, and other resources to help get contributions into etcd.
4
5# Email and chat
6
7- Email: [etcd-dev](https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/etcd-dev)
8- IRC: #[etcd](irc://irc.freenode.org:6667/#etcd) IRC channel on freenode.org
9
10## Getting started
11
12- Fork the repository on GitHub
13- Read the README.md for build instructions
14
15## Reporting bugs and creating issues
16
17Reporting bugs is one of the best ways to contribute. However, a good bug report has some very specific qualities, so please read over our short document on [reporting bugs](https://github.com/coreos/etcd/blob/master/Documentation/reporting_bugs.md) before submitting a bug report. This document might contain links to known issues, another good reason to take a look there before reporting a bug.
18
19## Contribution flow
20
21This is a rough outline of what a contributor's workflow looks like:
22
23- Create a topic branch from where to base the contribution. This is usually master.
24- Make commits of logical units.
25- Make sure commit messages are in the proper format (see below).
26- Push changes in a topic branch to a personal fork of the repository.
27- Submit a pull request to coreos/etcd.
28- The PR must receive a LGTM from two maintainers found in the MAINTAINERS file.
29
30Thanks for contributing!
31
32### Code style
33
34The coding style suggested by the Golang community is used in etcd. See the [style doc](https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/CodeReviewComments) for details.
35
36Please follow this style to make etcd easy to review, maintain and develop.
37
38### Format of the commit message
39
40We follow a rough convention for commit messages that is designed to answer two
41questions: what changed and why. The subject line should feature the what and
42the body of the commit should describe the why.
43
44```
45scripts: add the test-cluster command
46
47this uses tmux to setup a test cluster that can easily be killed and started for debugging.
48
49Fixes #38
50```
51
52The format can be described more formally as follows:
53
54```
55<subsystem>: <what changed>
56<BLANK LINE>
57<why this change was made>
58<BLANK LINE>
59<footer>
60```
61
62The first line is the subject and should be no longer than 70 characters, the second line is always blank, and other lines should be wrapped at 80 characters. This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.
63