# Contributing

Leiningen is the most active open-source Clojure project. We welcome
potential contributors and do our best to try to make it easy to help
out. Contributors who have had a single patch accepted may request
commit rights as well as a free [sticker](http://twitpic.com/2e33r1).

Discussion occurs both in the
[#leiningen channel on Freenode](irc://chat.freenode.net#leiningen)
and on the [mailing list](http://librelist.com/browser/leiningen/). To
join the mailing list, simply email `leiningen@librelist.org`; your
first message to that address will subscribe you without being posted.

Please report issues on the
[GitHub issue tracker](https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/issues)
or the mailing list. Sending bug reports to personal email addresses
is inappropriate. Simpler issues appropriate for first-time
contributors looking to help out are tagged "newbie".

Patches are preferred as patches from `git format-patch` on the
mailing list or as GitHub pull requests. Please use topic branches
when sending pull requests rather than committing directly to master
in order to minimize unnecessary merge commit clutter.

Leiningen is [mirrored at Gitorious](https://gitorious.org/leiningen/leiningen)
and [tested on Travis](http://travis-ci.org/technomancy/leiningen).

## Codebase

The definitions of the various tasks reside in `src/leiningen` in the
top-level project. The underlying mechanisms for things like
`project.clj` parsing, classpath calculation, and subprocess launching
are implemented inside the `leiningen-core` subproject.

See the
[readme for the leiningen-core library](https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/leiningen-core/README.md)
and `doc/PLUGINS.md` for more details on how Leiningen's codebase is
structured.

Try to be aware of the conventions in the existing code, except the
one where we don't write tests. Make a reasonable attempt to avoid
lines longer than 80 columns or function bodies longer than 20
lines. Don't use `when` unless it's for side-effects. Don't introduce
new protocols. Use `^:internal` metadata to mark vars which can't be
private but shouldn't be considered part of the public API.

## Bootstrapping

You don't need to "build" Leiningen per se, but when you're developing on a
checkout you will need to get its dependencies in place. Just use a stable
release of Leiningen to run `lein bootstrap` (an alias for `lein do install,
classpath .lein-bootstrap`) in the `leiningen-core` directory.

If you don't have a stable `lein` installed, simply check out the
`stable` branch and copy `bin/lein` to somewhere on your `$PATH`, then
switch your branch back.

If you want to use your development copy for everyday usage, symlink
`bin/lein` to somewhere on your `$PATH`. You'll want to rename your
stable installation to keep them from interfering; typically you can
name that `lein2` or `lein-stable`.

When the dependencies change you may have to do `rm .lein-classpath`
in the project root, though in most cases this can be done automatically.

Using `bin/lein` alone from the master branch without a full checkout
is not supported. If you want to just grab a shell script to work
with, use the `stable` branch.

## Tests

Before you're asking for a pull request, we would be very happy if you ensure
that the changes you've done doesn't break any of the existing test cases. While
there is a test suite, it's not terribly thorough, so don't put too much trust
in it. Patches which add test coverage for the functionality they change are
especially welcome.

To run the test cases, run `bin/lein test` in the root directory: This will test
both `leiningen-core` and `leiningen` itself. Do not attempt to run the tests
with a stable version of Leiningen, as the namespaces conflict and you may end
up with errors during the test run.