<title>Contributing To Fossil</title>

Users are encouraged to contributed enhancements back to the Fossil
project.  This note outlines some of the procedures for making
useful contributions.

<h2>1.0 Contributor Agreement</h2>

In order to accept your contributions, we <u>must</u> have a
[./copyright-release.pdf | Contributor Agreement (PDF)]
(or [./copyright-release.html | as HTML]) on file for you.  We require
this in order to maintain clear title to the Fossil code and prevent
the introduction of code with incompatible licenses or other entanglements
that might cause legal problems for Fossil users.  Many larger companies
and other lawyer-rich organizations require this as a precondition to using 
Fossil.

If you do not wish to submit a Contributor Agreement, we would still
welcome your suggestions and example code, but we will not use your code
directly - we will be forced to reimplement your changes from scratch which
might take longer.

<h2>2.0 Submitting Patches</h2>

Suggested changes or bug fixes can be submitted by creating a patch
against the current source tree.  Email patches to 
<a href="mailto:drh@sqlite.org">drh@sqlite.org</a>.  Be sure to 
describe in detail what the patch does and which version of Fossil
it is written against.  

A contributor agreement is not strictly necessary to submit a patch.
However, without a contributor agreement on file, your patch will be
used for reference only - it will not be applied to the code.  This
may delay acceptance of your patch.

Your patches or changes might not be accepted even if you do have
a contributor agreement on file.  Please do not take this personally
or as an affront to your coding ability.  Sometimes patches are rejected
because they seem to be taking the project in a direction that the
architect does not want to go.  Or, there might be an alternative
implementation of the same feature being prepared separately.

<h2>3.0 Check-in Privileges</h2>

Check-in privileges are granted on a case-by-case basis.   Your chances
of getting check-in privileges are much improved if you have a history
of submitting quality patches and/or making thoughtful posts on the
[http://www.mail-archive.com/fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org/ | mailing list].
A contributor agreement is, of course, a prerequisite for check-in
privileges.</p>

Contributors are asked to make all non-trivial changes on a branch.  The
Fossil Architect (Richard Hipp) will merge changes onto the trunk.</p>

Contributors are required to following the
[./checkin.wiki | pre-checkin checklist] prior to every checkin to
the Fossil self-hosting repository.  This checklist is short and succinct
and should only require a few seconds to follow.  Contributors 
should print out a copy of the pre-checkin checklist and keep
it on a notecard beside their workstations, for quick reference.

Contributors should review the
[./style.wiki | Coding Style Guidelines] and mimic the coding style
used through the rest of the Fossil source code.  Your code should
blend in.  A third-party reader should be unable to distinguish your
code from any other code in the source corpus. 

<h2>4.0 Testing</h2>

Fossil has the beginnings of a 
[../test/release-checklist.wiki | release checklist] but this is an
area that needs further work.  (Your contributions here are welcomed!)
Contributors with check-in privileges are expected to run the release
checklist on any major changes they contribute, and if appropriate expand
the checklist and/or the automated test scripts to cover their additions.


<h2>5.0 See Also</h2>

  *  [./build.wiki | How To Compile And Install Fossil]
  *  [./makefile.wiki | The Fossil Build Process]
  *  [./tech_overview.wiki | A Technical Overview of Fossil]
  *  [./adding_code.wiki | Adding Features To Fossil]
