CONTRIBUTING.md

Contribution Guide

Thank you for your interest in Stereum. The following is a set of instructions for contributing to this project. These are just guidelines, not rules, however it is highly recommended that you follow them in order to pass automated tests and your pull requests get accepted.

Prerequisites

Before you can start, you need to install the necessary software packages to develop (or optionally test and build) Stereum locally.

Required Software

Refer to the official NodeJS website to install NodeJS >= 16 LTS on your OS.

Recommended Software

Furthermore, the easiest way to follow our Style Guide and contributor workflow is to use Visual Studio Code (VSCode) as IDE with at least the following extensions added:

• Prettier
• ESLint
• GitLens

This guide will explain all further steps assuming you are using VSCode and the mentioned extensions.

If you are using Windows, we strongly recommend you to use Git Bash as terminal inside VSCode!

Getting Started

1. Fork the repository to your GitHub account
2. Clone the repository from your GitHub account to your local system
3. On your local system open the main directory (ethereum-node) in VSCode
4. Inside VSCode, open a new terminal and type:
   • cd launcher (to move to the launcher directory)
   • npm i (to install the required NodeJS packages)
   • npm run electron:serve (to start the development version of Stereum)

Congratulations, Stereum was running the first time in dev-mode on your local system. To create your own build you can use npm run electron:build and find it in the dist_electron folder.

Pull Requests

If you want to add changes to the global Stereum repository you need to do a pull request.

Pull requests will be reviewed/merged ASAP - please follow these steps:

1. Open your local development environment
2. Create your feature branch:
   • git checkout -b feat/new-feature
3. Use npm run format:check to check the format of your code and run npm run format to format your code
4. Commit your changes:
   • git commit -m "feat(optional): new feature"
5. Push the branch:
   • git push origin feat/new-feature
6. Open a pull request

Pull Request Titles

• Should be short and descriptive summary
• Should be written in imperative present tense
• Should not end with a period

For example:

Add a new restart button to the node page

If you wanna write commit messages and pull request like a boss, feel free to read this, but that's really just optional. 😃

Pull Request Essentials

• An open pull request signals to the maintainers that it's ready for review. This implies that a pull request which is not ready for review should remain as draft.
• If your pull request is no longer applicable to fix an issue, please close your pull request.
• If your pull request is fixable and needs additional changes or commits within a short period of time, please switch your pull request into a draft until it's ready for review.

Unit Testing and Linting

All pull requests running thru automated tests. It is recommended to run this tests locally before you open a pull request to pass global tests later on.

1. Execute npm run test .test to run unit tests with Jest (where no errors as result means passed)
2. Execute npm run lint:fix to run lint tests with ESLint (where no errors as result means passed)

Note: The ESLint (npm run lint:fix) tests are currently optional and you only need to care about files you changed.

But Reporting and Feature Requests

If you have found a bug or wanna have a new feature just create a new issue. Select the type of issue that best fits, and please fill out as much of the information as you can.

Style Guide

If you use the recommended software and extensions described in the prerequisites section usually everything is already auto formatted and/or code issues are announced in the "Problems" tab of VSCode.

However, here are a few hints you may follow to keep your code clean and pass automated tests:

• Make sure your code is properly linted:
  • Use an IDE that will show linting errors/warnings
  • Execute npm run lint:fix from the command line
  • Common rules:
    • Functions and variables should be camelCase
    • Classes should be PascalCase
    • Constants should be UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES
    • Use " instead of '

You only have to take care about linting issues of files you have changed

• Make sure that jest tests are passing:
  • run npm run test .test from the command line

Pull requests must pass all automated Jest tests to get accepted

• Comments:
  • If your code does something that is not obvious or deviates from standards, please leave a comment for other developers to explain your logic and reasoning
  • Use // commenting format as default
  • Optional use /* */ commenting format for documenting a function, class or variable
  • Keep comments short and simple

First Time Contributor?

Still not sure how to help or where to start? Then visit us on Discord or drop us an email to [email protected].