# Contributing To Githical

Thanks for helping improve Githical. This project is a Go terminal UI for
focused local Git workflows, so changes should keep repository mutations
predictable, guarded, and easy to inspect.

## Development Setup

Prerequisites:

- Go 1.26.5 or a compatible newer Go toolchain.
- The system `git` binary available on `PATH`.
- A terminal that can run an interactive Bubble Tea application.

Use these checks before opening a pull request:

```sh
gofmt -w ./cmd ./internal ./docs
go test ./...
./scripts/build-dist.sh
```

`scripts/build-dist.sh` is required for project builds because it refreshes the
distributable files in `dist/`. A plain `go build ./...` is useful compile
verification, but it is not the release build.

## Pull Requests

- Keep changes scoped to a single behavior or documentation concern.
- Add or update tests for behavior changes.
- Prefer existing package boundaries and UI patterns.
- Keep all UI colors in `internal/ui/theme.go`; do not add direct color literals
  or ad hoc Lip Gloss colors elsewhere.
- Document new user-visible workflows in `README.md` or `docs/install.md`.

## Release Process

Releases are created from `v*` tags. The GitHub release workflow runs tests,
builds all platform archives with `scripts/build-dist.sh`, creates `.deb` and
`.rpm` packages, smoke tests each archive on its native OS and architecture,
attests the final artifacts, and publishes them to GitHub Releases. It also
generates Homebrew and WinGet metadata. See `docs/publishing.md` for the free
external repository and token setup used to publish that metadata.