Contributing

January 22, 2026 · View on GitHub

👍🎉 First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! 🎉👍

When contributing to this project, please first discuss the changes you wish to make via an issue before making changes.

Please note the Code of Conduct document, please follow it in all your interactions with this project.

Your First Code Contribution

Unsure where to begin contributing? You can start by looking through the help-wanted issues.

Getting the code

git clone https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens.git

Prerequisites

👉 NOTE! Corepack version

Check your version of corepack by running corepack -v and ensure it is at least 0.31.0. To update corepack, run npm install corepack@latest. You can enable corepack by running corepack enable.

Dependencies

From a terminal, where you have cloned the repository, execute the following command to install the required dependencies:

pnpm install

Build

From a terminal, where you have cloned the repository, execute the following command to re-build the project from scratch:

pnpm run rebuild

👉 NOTE! This will run a complete rebuild of the project.

Or to just run a quick build, use:

pnpm run build

Watch

During development you can use a watcher to make builds on changes quick and easy. From a terminal, where you have cloned the repository, execute the following command:

pnpm run watch

Or use the provided watch task in VS Code, execute the following from the command palette (be sure there is no > at the start):

task watch

This will first do an initial full build and then watch for file changes, compiling those changes incrementally, enabling a fast, iterative coding experience.

👉 Tip! You can press CMD+SHIFT+B (CTRL+SHIFT+B on Windows, Linux) to start the watch task.

👉 Tip! You don't need to stop and restart the development version of Code after each change. You can just execute Reload Window from the command palette.

Formatting

This project uses prettier for code formatting. You can run prettier across the code by calling pnpm run pretty from a terminal.

To format the code as you make changes you can install the Prettier - Code formatter extension.

Add the following to your User Settings to run prettier:

"editor.formatOnSave": true,

Linting

This project uses ESLint for code linting. You can run ESLint across the code by calling pnpm run lint from a terminal. Warnings from ESLint show up in the Errors and Warnings quick box and you can navigate to them from inside VS Code.

To lint the code as you make changes you can install the ESLint extension.

Bundling

To generate a production bundle (without packaging) run the following from a terminal:

pnpm run bundle

To generate a VSIX (installation package) run the following from a terminal:

pnpm run package

Debugging

Using VS Code (desktop)

  1. Open the vscode-gitlens folder
  2. Ensure the required dependencies are installed
  3. Choose the Watch & Run launch configuration from the launch dropdown in the Run and Debug viewlet and press F5
  4. A new VS Code "Extension Development Host" window will open with the extension loaded and ready for debugging
    1. If the "Extension Development Host" window opened without a folder/workspace with a repository (required for most GitLens functionality), you will need to open one and then stop and restart the debug session

In order to see any code changes reflected in the "Extension Development Host" window, you will need to restart the debug session, e.g. using the "Restart" button in the debug toolbar or by pressing [Ctrl|Cmd]+Shift+F5. Although, if the code changes are purely within a webview, you can refresh the webview by clicking the refresh button in the toolbar associated with the webview.

Note: If you see a pop-up with a message similar to "The task cannot be tracked. Make sure to have a problem matcher defined.", you will need to install the TypeScript + Webpack Problem Matchers extension.

Using VS Code (desktop webworker)

  1. Open the vscode-gitlens folder
  2. Ensure the required dependencies are installed
  3. Choose the Watch & Run (web) launch configuration from the launch dropdown in the Run and Debug viewlet and press F5
  4. A new VS Code "Extension Development Host" window will open with the extension loaded and ready for debugging
    1. If the "Extension Development Host" window opened without a folder/workspace with a repository (required for most GitLens functionality), you will need to open one and then stop and restart the debug session

In order to see any code changes reflected in the "Extension Development Host" window, you will need to restart the debug session, e.g. using the "Restart" button in the debug toolbar or by pressing [Ctrl|Cmd]+Shift+F5. Although, if the code changes are purely within a webview, you can refresh the webview by clicking the refresh button in the toolbar associated with the webview.

Using VS Code for the Web (locally)

See https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/web-extensions#test-your-web-extension-in-a-browser-using-vscodetestweb

  1. Open the vscode-gitlens folder
  2. Ensure the required dependencies are installed
  3. Run the build or watch task from the command palette
  4. Run the Run (local web) task from the command palette

Using VS Code for the Web (vscode.dev)

See https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/web-extensions#test-your-web-extension-in-vscode.dev

  1. Open the vscode-gitlens folder
  2. Ensure the required dependencies are installed
  3. Run the build or watch task from the command palette
  4. Run the Run (vscode.dev) task from the command palette

Submitting a Pull Request

Please follow all the instructions in the PR template.

Contributions to GitLens+ Licensed Files

This repository contains both OSS-licensed and non-OSS-licensed files. All files in or under any directory named "plus" fall under LICENSE.plus. The remaining files fall under LICENSE, the MIT license.

If a pull request is submitted which contains changes to files in or under any directory named "plus", then you agree that GitKraken and/or its licensors (as applicable) retain all right, title and interest in and to all such modifications and/or patches.

Update the CHANGELOG

The Change Log is updated manually and an entry should be added for each change. Changes are grouped in lists by added, changed, removed, or fixed.

Entries should be written in future tense:

  • Be sure to give yourself much deserved credit by adding your name and user in the entry

Added

Changed

Fixed

Update the README

If this is your first contribution to GitLens, please give yourself credit by adding yourself to the Contributors section of the README in the following format:

  • Your Name ([@<your-github-username>](https://github.com/<your-github-username>)) &mdash; [contributions](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/commits?author=<your-github-username>)

Publishing

Stable Releases

Versioning

GitLens version changes are bucketed into two types:

  • minor: normal release (new features, enhancements and fixes)
  • patch: hotfix release (just fixes)

Note: major version bumps are only considered for more special circumstances.

Preparing a Normal Release

Before publishing a new release, do the following:

  1. Create a GitHub milestone for any potential patch releases, named {major}.{minor}-patch with a description of Work intended for any patch releases before the {major}.{minor} release
  2. Create a GitHub milestone for the next release, {major}.{minor+1} with a description of Work intended for the {release-month} {release-year} release and a set the appropriate due date
  3. Ensure all items in the {major}.{minor} GitHub milestone are closed and verified or moved into one of the above milestones
  4. Close the {major}.{minor} and {major}.{minor-1}-patch GitHub milestones

Then, use the prep-release script to prepare a new release. The script updates the package.json and CHANGELOG.md appropriately, commits the changes as Bumps to v{major}.{minor}.{patch}, and creates a v{major}.{minor}.{patch} tag which when pushed will trigger the CI to publish a release.

  1. Ensure you are on the main branch and have a clean working tree
  2. Ensure the CHANGELOG.md has been updated with the release notes
  3. Run pnpm run prep-release and enter the desired {major}.{minor}.{patch} version when prompted
  4. Review the Bumps to v{major}.{minor}.{patch} commit
  5. Run git push --follow-tags to push the commit and tag

Pushing the v{major}.{minor}.{patch} tag will trigger the Publish Stable workflow to automatically package the extension, create a GitHub release, and deploy it to the VS Marketplace.

If the action fails and retries are unsuccessful, the VSIX can be built locally with pnpm run package and uploaded manually to the marketplace. A GitHub release can also be created manually using v{major}.{minor}.{patch} as the title and the notes from the CHANGELOG.md with the VSIX attached.

Preparing a Patch Release

Before publishing a new release, do the following:

  1. Ensure all items in the {major}.{minor}-patch GitHub milestone are closed and verified
  2. Create, if needed, a release/{major}.{minor} branch from the latest v{major}.{minor}.{patch} tag
  3. Cherry-pick the desired commits from main into the release/{major}.{minor} branch
  4. Follow steps 2-5 in Preparing a Normal Release above
  5. Manually update the CHANGELOG.md on main with the patch release notes

Note: All patch releases for the same {major}.{minor} version use the same release/{major}.{minor} branch

Pre-releases

The Publish Pre-release workflow is automatically run every AM unless no new changes have been committed to main. This workflow can also be manually triggered by running the Publish Pre-release workflow from the Actions tab, no more than once per hour (because of the versioning scheme).

Insiders (deprecated use pre-release instead)

The Publish Insiders workflow is no longer available and was replaced with the pre-release edition.

Updating GL Icons

To add new icons to the GL Icons font follow the steps below:

  • Add new SVG icons to the images/icons folder

  • Append entries for the new icons to the end of the images/icons/template/mapping.json file

    • Entries should be in the format of <icon-file-name-without-extension>: <increment-last-number>

  • Optimize and build the icons by running the following from a terminal:

    pnpm run icons:svgo
pnpm run build:icons

Once you've finished copy the new glicons.woff2?<uuid> URL from src/webviews/apps/shared/glicons.scss and search and replace the old references with the new one.

Testing (Unit and E2E)

GitLens uses VS Code's testing infrastructure for unit and integration tests.

Building Tests

Unit and E2E tests are built as part of the main build, but can also be built directly.

# Build everything (extension, webviews, and tests)
pnpm run build
pnpm run build:turbo  # Turbo build (no typechecking or linting)

# Build unit tests only
pnpm run build:tests

# Build E2E tests
pnpm run bundle:e2e

Running Tests

# Run unit tests
pnpm run test

# Run E2E tests
pnpm run test:e2e

Watch Mode

# Watch mode for everything during development (extension, webviews, and tests)
pnpm run watch

Writing Unit Tests

Tests are co-located with source files in __tests__/ directories:

src/
  └── system/
      ├── string.ts
      └── __tests__/
          └── string.test.ts  ← Test file

Create test files using the naming pattern *.test.ts:

import { describe, it, expect } from 'vitest';
import { functionToTest } from '../module';

describe('functionToTest', () => {
	it('should handle basic case', () => {
		const result = functionToTest('input');
		expect(result).toBe('expected output');
	});

	it('should handle edge cases', () => {
		expect(functionToTest('')).toBe('');
		expect(functionToTest(null)).toBeUndefined();
	});
});

Test Best Practices

  • Co-locate tests: Place tests in __tests__/ directories next to the code they test
  • Descriptive names: Use clear test names that describe what is being tested
  • Test behavior: Focus on testing behavior and outputs, not implementation details
  • Edge cases: Always test edge cases, empty inputs, and error conditions
  • Mock dependencies: Use mocks for external dependencies (VS Code API, file system, etc.)
  • Keep tests fast: Unit tests should run quickly; use mocks to avoid slow operations

Debugging Tests

Use VS Code's built-in test runner:

  1. Open the Testing view in the sidebar
  2. Click the debug icon next to any test to debug it
  3. Set breakpoints in test files or source code
  4. Use the Debug Console to inspect variables

Alternatively, use the provided launch configurations:

  • Open the Run and Debug view
  • Select a test-related launch configuration
  • Press F5 to start debugging

Benchmarking

GitLens includes a benchmarking framework for measuring and comparing performance of critical code paths.

Running Benchmarks

# List all available benchmarks
pnpm run benchmark:list

# Run all benchmarks
pnpm run benchmark

# Run a specific benchmark by name
pnpm run benchmark <name>

Creating New Benchmarks

Benchmarks are automatically discovered when placed in __tests__/ directories:

  1. Create a file named *.benchmark.ts in any __tests__/ directory
  2. Use tinybench to write your benchmark:
import { Bench } from 'tinybench';

async function runBenchmark() {
	console.log('MY FEATURE BENCHMARK');

	const bench = new Bench({ time: 100 });

	bench
		.add('Method A', () => {
			// Code to benchmark
		})
		.add('Method B', () => {
			// Alternative implementation
		});

	await bench.run();

	// Display results
	for (const task of bench.tasks) {
		console.log(`${task.name}: ${task.result?.hz.toLocaleString()} ops/sec`);
	}
}

runBenchmark();
  1. Run your benchmark: pnpm run benchmark <name>

Best Practices

  • Use realistic data: Generate test data matching real-world patterns
  • Test multiple scenarios: Benchmark with different data sizes (small, medium, large)
  • Measure complete operations: Include all relevant work in benchmarks
  • Display clear results: Show ops/sec, average time, and margin of error
  • Focus on hot paths: Benchmark performance-critical code

See the full Benchmarking Guide for detailed information and the src/system/__tests__/string.benchmark.ts example.