radare2/CONTRIBUTING.md

How to report issues

Before reporting an issue with GitHub, be sure that:

• you are using the git version of radare2
• you are using a clean installation
• the issue was not already reported

When the above conditions are satisfied, feel free to submit an issue while trying to be as precise as possible. If you can, provide the problematic binary, the steps to reproduce the error and a backtrace in case of SEGFAULTs. Any information will help to fix the problem.

How to contribute

There are a few guidelines that we need contributors to follow so that we can try to keep the codebase consistent and clean.

Getting Started

• Make sure you have a GitHub account and solid ability to use git.

• Fork the repository on GitHub.

• Create a topic branch from master. Please avoid working directly on the master branch.

• Make commits of logical units.

• Check for coding style issues with:

  git diff master..mybranch | ./sys/clang-format-diff.py -p1
  

  and be sure to follow the CODINGSTYLE (more on this in DEVELOPERS.md).

• Submit the Pull Request(PR) on Github.

• Prefix the PR title with WIP: if it's not yet ready to be merged

• When relevant, write a test in test/.

Rebasing onto updated master

Every so often, your PR will lag behind master and get conflicts.

To "update" your branch my-awesome-feature, you rebase it onto the latest radareorg/master, and force-push the result into your fork.

Step 1: Switch to master branch.

$ git checkout master

Step 2: Pull new commits published to radareorg repo.

$ git pull https://github.com/radareorg/radare2

Step 3: Switch back to my-awesome-feature branch.

$ git checkout my-awesome-feature

Step 4: Rebase the my-awesome-feature branch.

$ git rebase master

Optionally, use the alternative mode "interactive rebase". It allows to squash your commits all into one, reorder, reword them, etc.

$ git rebase -i master

Follow git instructions when conflicts arise.

Step 5: publish your updated local branch.

$ git push -f

This -f force-flag is needed because git commits are immutable: rebasing creates newer versions of them. git needs to confirm the destruction of previous incarnations.

When afraid to touch force and risk losing your work (do backups!..), try merging master into your branch instead of rebasing onto it. This is discouraged, as it produces ugly hard-to-maintain commit history.

Commit message rules

When commiting your changes into the repository you may want to follow some rules to make the git history more readable and consistent:

• Start the message capitalized (only the first character must be in uppercase)
• Be short and concise, the whole concept must fit one line
• If a command is inlined, use backticks
• Add a double-hashtag if the change matters for the changelog (See below)
• If the commit fixes a bug start with 'Fix #number - '
• For extra details, add an empty line and use asterisk item list below
• Use present simple grammar tense (Add vs Added, Fix vs Fixed/Fixes)

Commit message hashtag list:

• ##anal - analysis related
• ##asm - assembler
• ##bin - binary parsing
• ##build - build fixes/changes
• ##config - config var changes/additions/renamings
• ##cons - console/terminal-related
• ##crypto - cryptography
• ##debug - debugger stuff
• ##diff - diffing code, strings, basic blocks, ...
• ##disasm - disassembler
• ##doc - documentation
• ##egg - the r_lang compiler
• ##emu - emulation, including esil
• ##graph - basic block graph, callgraph, ...
• ##io - related to the r_io library
• ##json - json fixes/changes
• ##lang - bindings
• ##meta - metadata handling other than printing
• ##optimization-space/time optimizations
• ##port - portability (new OS/archs)
• ##print - printing data, structures, strings, tables, types ..
• ##projects - saving/loading state
• ##refactor - improve code quality
• ##remote - r2 over tcp, http, rap, serial .. including collaboration
• ##search - rafind2, / command, ..
• ##shell - commandline, newshell, ..
• ##signatures-searching/generating them
• ##test - testing infrastructure fixes/changes
• ##tools - r2pm, rarun2, rax2 ... that don't fit in other categories
• ##util - core apis
• ##visual - visual ui, including panels

Additional resources

• README.md
• DEVELOPERS.md

If you need more confidence in your git skills, check out this quick guide: https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/git/