# Contributing

:+1::tada: First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! :tada::+1:

It's people like you who make todo.txt such a great tool.

The following is a set of guidelines for contributing to todo.txt and its packages. These are mostly guidelines, not rules. Use your best judgment, and feel free to propose changes to this document in a pull request.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue, assessing changes, and helping you finalize your pull requests.

todo.txt is an open source project and we love to receive contributions from our community — you! There are many ways to contribute, from writing tutorials or blog posts, improving the documentation, submitting bug reports and feature requests or writing code which can be incorporated into todo.txt itself.

Please, don't use the issue tracker for support questions. Check whether our [Gitter.im] channel can help with your issue, or add a [discussion under Q&A](https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli/discussions/categories/q-a).

# Ground Rules

## Responsibilities

- Be welcoming to newcomers and encourage diverse new contributors from all backgrounds. See our [Code of Conduct].
- Ensure cross-platform compatibility for every change that's accepted. Windows, Mac, Linux.
- Create issues for any major changes and enhancements that you wish to make. Discuss things transparently and get community feedback.
- Don't add any new features to the `todo.sh` main script unless they are core functionality. Most extensions and additions are better implemented as separate add-ons. Only essential stuff used by everyone should be added to the main script.
- Keep pull requests as small as possible, preferably one new feature per pull request.

# Your First Contribution

Unsure where to begin contributing? You can start by looking through these issues:

- [Help wanted issues](https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli/issues?q=%20is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3A%22help%20wanted%22%20sort%3Acomments-desc) - issues which should be a bit more involved than beginner issues.

The issue lists are sorted by total number of comments. While not perfect, the number of comments is a reasonable proxy for impact a given change will have.

At this point, you're ready to make your changes! Feel free to ask for help; everyone is a beginner at first :smile_cat:

If a maintainer asks you to "rebase" your PR, they're saying that a lot of code has changed, and that you need to update your branch so it's easier to merge.

# Getting started

For something that is bigger than a one or two line fix:

1. Create your own fork of the code.
1. Do the changes in your fork.
1. If you like the change and think the project could use it:
    - Be sure you have followed the code style for the project.
    - Note the [Code of Conduct].

As a rule of thumb, changes are obvious fixes if they do not introduce any new functionality or creative thinking. As long as the change does not affect functionality, some likely examples include the following:

- Spelling / grammar fixes
- Typo correction, white space and formatting changes
- Comment clean up
- Bug fixes that change default return values or error codes stored in constants
- Adding logging messages or debugging output
- Changes to ‘metadata’ files like .gitignore, build scripts, etc.
- Moving source files from one directory or package to another

# How to report a bug

## Security Vulnerability

Do **NOT** open an issue; see the [Security Policy](../SECURITY.md) for instructions on how to responsibly report a security vulnerability.

## Bug

Please fill out the entire form when [filing an issue](https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli/issues/new/choose).

# How to suggest a feature or enhancement

The todo.txt philosophy is to provide a plain-text, software-agnostic way to keep track of your tasks.

If you find yourself wishing for a feature that doesn't exist, you are probably not alone. There are bound to be others out there with similar needs. Many of the features that todo.txt-cli has today have been added because our users saw the need. Open an issue on our issues list on GitHub which describes the feature you would like to see, why you need it, and how it should work.

# Code review process

The core team looks at Pull Requests on a regular basis. After feedback has been given we expect responses within two weeks. After two weeks we may close the pull request if it isn't showing any activity.

# Community

You can chat with the core team on [Gitter.im].

[Code of Conduct]: ./CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
[Gitter.im]: https://gitter.im/todotxt/