Contributions are always welcome! And there is a multitude of ways in which you can help depending on what you like to do, or are good at. Anything from documentation, code cleanup, issue completion, new features, you name it, even filing issues is contributing and greatly appreciated!
There are a few goals of `clap` that I'd like to maintain throughout contributions. If your proposed changes break, or go against any of these goals we'll discuss the changes further before merging (but will *not* be ignored, all contributes are welcome!). These are by no means hard-and-fast rules, as I'm no expert and break them myself from time to time (even if by mistake or ignorance :P).
* Remain backwards compatible when possible
- If backwards compatibility *must* be broken, use deprecation warnings if at all possible before removing legacy code
- This does not apply for security concerns
* Parse arguments quickly
- Parsing of arguments shouldn't slow down usage of the main program
- This is also true of generating help and usage information (although *slightly* less stringent, as the program is about to exit)
* Try to be cognizant of memory usage
- Once parsing is complete, the memory footprint of `clap` should be low since the main program is the star of the show
*`panic!` on *developer* error
(e.g. [apps](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/blob/62eff1f8d3394cef819b4aa7b23a1032fc584f03/src/build/app/debug_asserts.rs) and [args](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/blob/62eff1f8d3394cef819b4aa7b23a1032fc584f03/src/build/arg/debug_asserts.rs)),
- [Discussions](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/discussions) can be useful for getting help and brainstorming
- [Issues](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/issues) work well discussing a need and how to solve it
- Focus: requirements gathering and design discussions
- Sometimes a branch or Draft PR might be used to demonstrate an idea
- [PRs](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/pulls) work well for when the solution has already been discussed as an Issue or there is little to no discussion (obvious bug or documentation fixes)
- Develop the feature behind an `unstable-<name>` feature flag with a stabilization tracking issue (e.g. [Multicall Tracking issue](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/issues/2861))
As we work towards [a more flexible architecture](https://github.com/clap-rs/clap/discussions/3476), we hope to support multiple major versions to help ease users through the upgrade churn.
Note: We have not yet determined the End-of-Life schedule for previous major versions. We will give at least a 2 month warning before changing the support status.
A helpful technique is to see the `clap` debug output while developing features. In order to see the debug output while running the full test suite or individual tests, run:
1.`git rebase` into concise commits and remove `--fixup`s or `wip` commits (`git rebase -i HEAD~NUM` where `NUM` is number of commits back to start the rebase)
2. Push your changes back to your fork (`git push origin $your-branch`)
3. Create a pull request against `master`! (You can also create the pull request first, and we'll merge when ready. This a good way to discuss proposed changes.)
