CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Atom

👍🎉 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.

Table Of Contents

What should I know before I get started?

• Code of Conduct
• Atom and Packages

How Can I Contribute?

• Submitting Issues
• Your First Code Contribution
• Pull Requests

Styleguides

• Git Commit Messages
• CoffeeScript Styleguide
• Specs Styleguide
• Documentation Styleguide

Additional Notes

• Issue and Pull Request Labels

What should I know before I get started?

Code of Conduct

This project adheres to the Contributor Covenant 1.2. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to [email protected].

Atom and Packages

Atom is a large open source project—it's made up of over 200 repositories. When you initially consider contributing to Atom, you might be unsure about which of those 200 repositories implements the functionality you want to change or report a bug for. This section should help you with that.

Atom is intentionally very modular. Nearly every non-editor UI element you interact with comes from a package, even fundamental things like tabs and the status-bar. These packages are packages in the same way that packages in the package store are packages, with one difference: they are bundled into the default distribution.

To get a sense for the packages that are bundled with Atom, you can go to Settings > Packages within Atom and take a look at the Core Packages section.

Here's a list of the big ones:

• atom/atom - Atom Core! The core editor component is responsible for basic text editing (e.g. cursors, selections, scrolling), text indentation, wrapping, and folding, text rendering, editor rendering, file system operations (e.g. saving), and installation and auto-updating. You should also use this repository for feedback related to the core API and for large, overarching design proposals.
• tree-view - file and directory listing on the left of the UI.
• fuzzy-finder - the quick file opener.
• find-and-replace - all search and replace functionality.
• tabs - the tabs for open editors at the top of the UI.
• status-bar - the status bar at the bottom of the UI.
• markdown-preview - the rendered markdown pane item.
• settings-view - the settings UI pane item.
• autocomplete-plus - autocompletions shown while typing. Some languages have additional packages for autocompletion functionality, such as autocomplete-html.
• git-diff - Git change indicators shown in the editor's gutter.
• language-javascript - all bundled languages are packages too, and each one has a separate package language-[name]. Use these for feedback on syntax highlighting issues that only appear for a specific language.
• one-dark-ui - the default UI styling for anything but the text editor. UI theme packages (i.e. packages with a -ui suffix) provide only styling and it's possible that a bundled package is responsible for a UI issue. There are other other bundled UI themes, such as one-light-ui.
• one-dark-syntax - the default syntax highlighting styles applied for all languages. There are other other bundled syntax themes, such as solarized-dark. You should use these packages for reporting issues that appear in many languages, but disappear if you change to another syntax theme.
• apm - the apm command line tool (Atom Package Manager). You should use this repository for any contributions related to the apm tool and to publishing packages.
• atom.io - the repository for feedback on the Atom.io website and the Atom.io package API used by apm.

There are many more, but this list should be a good starting point. For more information on how to work with Atom's official packages, see Contributing to Atom Packages.

Also, because Atom is so extensible, it's possible that a feature you've become accustomed to in Atom or an issue you're encountering aren't coming from a bundled package at all, but rather a community package you've installed. Each community package has its own repository too, and you should be able to find it in Settings > Packages for the packages you installed and contribute there.

How can I contribute?

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.

Your First Code Contribution

Unsure where to begin contributing to Atom? You can start by looking through these beginner and help-wanted issues:

• Beginner issues - issues which should only require a few lines of code, and a test or two.
• Help wanted issues - issues which should be a bit more involved than beginner issues.

Both issue lists are sorted by total number of comments. While not perfect, number of comments is a reasonable proxy for impact a given change will have.

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

Styleguides

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) ->

Additional Notes

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 all Atom repositories, but some are specific to 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 have 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	Feature requests.
bug	search	search	Confirmed bugs or reports that are very likely to be bugs.
question	search	search	Questions more than bug reports or feature requests (e.g. how do I do X).
feedback	search	search	General feedback more than bug reports or feature requests.
help-wanted	search	search	The Atom core team would appreciate help from the community in resolving these issues.
beginner	search	search	Less complex issues which would be good first issues to work on for users who want to contribute to Atom.
more-information-needed	search	search	More information needs to be collected about these problems or feature requests (e.g. steps to reproduce).
needs-reproduction	search	search	Likely bugs, but haven't been reliably reproduced.
blocked	search	search	Issues blocked on other issues.
duplicate	search	search	Issues which are duplicates of other issues, i.e. they have been reported before.
wontfix	search	search	The Atom core team has decided not to fix these issues for now, either because they're working as intended or for some other reason.
invalid	search	search	Issues which are't valid (e.g. user errors).
package-idea	search	search	Feature request which might be good candidates for new packages, instead of extending Atom or core Atom packages.
wrong-repo	search	search	Issues reported on the wrong repository (e.g. a bug related to the Settings View package was reported on Atom core).

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 about uncaught exceptions, normally created from the Notifications package.
crash	search	search	Reports of Atom completely crashing.
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.
electron	search	search	Issues that require changes to Electron to fix or implement.

Core Team Project Management

Label name	atom/atom 🔎	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	The Atom core team's roadmap post version 1.0.0.
atom	search	search	Topics discussed for prioritization at the next meeting of Atom core team members.

Pull Request Labels

Label name	atom/atom 🔎	atom‑org 🔎	Description
work-in-progress	search	search	Pull requests which are still being worked on, more changes will follow.
needs-review	search	search	Pull requests which need code review, and approval from maintainers or Atom core team.
under-review	search	search	Pull requests being reviewed by maintainers or Atom core team.
requires-changes	search	search	Pull requests which need to be updated based on review comments and then reviewed again.
needs-testing	search	search	Pull requests which need manual testing.