CONTRIBUTING.md

August 6, 2026 · View on GitHub

Set up your mc GitHub Repository

Fork the pgsty/mc repository to your own personal repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/$USER_ID/mc
$ cd mc
$ make
$ ./mc --help

Developer Guidelines

mc welcomes your contribution. To make the process as seamless as possible, we ask for the following:

  • Go ahead and fork the project and make your changes. We encourage pull requests to discuss code changes.

    • Fork it
    • Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
    • Commit your changes with a DCO sign-off (git commit -s -am 'Add some feature')
    • Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
    • Create new Pull Request against the main branch of pgsty/mc

  • If you have additional dependencies for mc, mc manages its dependencies using go mod

    • Run go get foo/bar
    • Edit your code to import foo/bar
    • Run go mod tidy from top-level folder

  • When you're ready to create a pull request, be sure to:

    • Have test cases for the new code. If you have questions about how to do it, please ask in your pull request.
    • Run go fmt
    • Squash your commits into a single commit. git rebase -i. It's okay to force update your pull request.
    • Make sure make install completes.

  • Read Go Code Review Comments from the Go project

    • mc project is conformant with Golang style
    • if you happen to observe offending code, please feel free to send a pull request

Licensing of Contributions

This project is licensed under the GNU AGPL v3.0 or later. Its core is Copyright (c) MinIO, Inc.; the combined work can never be relicensed, and this fork does not try to.

  • No CLA. We do not ask you to sign a Contributor License Agreement and we do not take your copyright. Contributions are accepted inbound=outbound: you keep the copyright to your changes and license them under the same AGPL-3.0-or-later as the project itself. The maintainers receive no rights beyond the project license.

  • DCO sign-off required. Every commit must carry a Signed-off-by: Your Name <you@example.com> trailer certifying the Developer Certificate of Origin 1.1 — your statement that you have the right to submit the code under the project license. Sign each commit with:

    git commit -s

    Forgot some? Repair your branch with git rebase --signoff and force-push. CI rejects pull requests containing unsigned commits; the sign-off email must match the commit author email. (Lowercase -s is the plain-text DCO sign-off; cryptographic -S/GPG signing is welcome but independent.)

  • Provenance. Only submit code you are entitled to submit. When relaying a patch written by someone else — for example cherry-picking from the archived upstream or another fork — preserve original authorship (git cherry-pick -x, keep the author field and any existing Signed-off-by trailers) and add your own sign-off as the person passing it along.

  • File headers. Files derived from upstream keep the original MinIO copyright header unchanged. New files added by this fork use the dual header, followed by the standard AGPL boilerplate:

    // Copyright (c) 2015-2025 MinIO, Inc.
// Copyright (c) 2025-2026 PGSTY

  • Squash merges must keep the Signed-off-by: trailers in the resulting commit message.

  • Authorship and tooling. The human contributor is the author of the commit and the sole signatory of its DCO sign-off. Attribution trailers for assistive tooling (for example Co-Authored-By: naming an AI assistant) are informational only: they record which tools were used, and do not create authorship, co-authorship, or any copyright claim. Whoever signs off remains responsible for the content of the commit, whatever produced it.