CONTRIBUTING

If you have ideas for features or implementation, please open an issue to record your thoughts.

Commits

Commits follow the Conventional Commits specification. These are used to automatically generate release notes.

Pull Requests

PRs welcome, but as things are evolving rapidly, a conversation before any major changes is probably worthwhile.

If your PR involves multiple commits, they will most likely be squashed into a single commit so that there is a single line in the release notes, so please title the PR using the conventional commit message that should be used for that single commit.

Testing

For the most part, Contextive has been developed using Test-Driven Development. This maintains a high quality test suite with minimal manual regression testing when releasing new versions.

Although contributors are not required to use Test-Driven Development, we do request appropriate tests be included in any PRs.

Formatting

All F# code should be formatted with Fantomas. If you use Visual Studio Code with the devenv environment (see below) and install the recommended extensions, this should happen automatically on save.

Documentation

IDE Plugins

Each IDE that Contextive supports (either with a plugin, or with a raw language server) has a folder in the (src)[./src] folder. Please ensure the appropriate README.md is updated if your change affects a particular IDE.

ADRs

Key architectural decisions are tracked using ADRs (Architectural Decision Records) which can be found in the docs/adr folder. The MADR format is the current default.

If your PR or proposal includes major architectural changes, please prepare a draft ADR in that format.

Development Environment

The default development environment uses devenv, an environment management tool based on Nix.

The simplest way to get started is to ensure devenv is installed (Note: the instructions say to install Nix first - Determinate Nix is also a valid option that works well for the Contextive maintainers).

Then, run:

./start.sh in the root of the repo.

Once the environment is available you'll be in a shell with all necessary dependencies. Launch your favourite IDE within that shell and get started.

A list of recommended extensions for Visual Studio Code is provided in .vscode/extensions.json, and you should be prompted to install them when this repository is opened.