Thank you for your interest in contributing to Marker. All contributions are appreciated!
This project follows Rust's Code of Conduct. See Marker's Code of Conduct file for more information.
Issues are the right place to start if you've found a bug, want to suggest a feature, or request help. Before you create a new issue, it would be a big help if you checked the existing issues to see if the bug, feature, or question already exists.
-
Bug Reports
If you find a bug, please try to include as much information as possible. It would be perfect if the following points were addressed:
- The bug you found
- An example how it can be reproduced
- The faulty output from Marker
- The version of Marker you're using
- The toolchain you're using
-
Feature Requests
If you want to suggest a feature, please also explain what you want to archive with it. It would be perfect if the following information were included:
- The feature description
- The motivation behind this feature
- Which component should provide the feature
- Any additional information that can be useful for development
-
Questions
If you have a question, please always ask. In your question, it would be good if you included the following information, if applicable:
- Your question
- The version of Marker you're using
- The component of Marker you're asking about
Contributing code to Marker is a great way to help. The following is a quick overview of the steps involved in contributing code.
If you're looking for something to work on, please check out Marker's open issues. You can also filter for the E-good-first-issue
label to find easier issues that give a gentle introduction to Marker's code.
You can also work on tasks not yet tracked in the [open issue]. For this, please refer to the Create an Issue section. Generally speaking, bug fixes, spelling corrections, or new utilities are always welcome. Changes to the public interface should first be discussed in an issue to ensure that the update will later be accepted.
Once you've decided on an issue, please comment on it and say that you want to work on it. You can also ping any active maintainer to receive mentoring instructions.
To get started, you have to fork Marker and clone the repository. The following is a quick overview of the involved steps:
- Fork the project on GitHub.
- Clone the repository into your preferred dev environment.
- Add the
rust-marker/marker
repository as an upstream remote:git remote add upstream [email protected]:rust-marker/marker.git
- Run
cargo check
to install the required toolchain and ensure that everything is set up correctly.
That's it. Now you're ready to drive into your first change.
It's recommended to set the rust-analyzer.rustc.source
configuration, to allow autocompletion for rustc types. Rust-Analyzer needs to be restarted, for the change to take affect:
{
"rust-analyzer.rustc.source": "discover"
}
While working on the API, it can also be helpful to enable inlay type hints for elided lifetimes in function signatures. See rust-analyzer.inlayHints.lifetimeElisionHints.enable
:
{
"rust-analyzer.inlayHints.lifetimeElisionHints.enable": "skip_trivial",
}
The type of change and recommended documentation to read depends on the component you want to work on. Here is a collection of useful links. Note that most of these are not targeted towards Marker, but they're still super useful:
cargo_marker
: This component uses several well-known dependencies with awesome documentation. Additionally, it has doc comments in most modules.marker_api
: The AST representation of Marker and everything needed to create a lint cratemarker_rustc_driver
: This component translates rustc's representation to Marker's API.marker_uitest
: This component is a small wrapper around the ui_test cratemarker_lints
: This crate provides lints for Marker. It only uses the public interface of Marker:
Marker is currently missing documentation on how to best approach issues in other components. You're always welcome to reach out and ask for advice. You can also search the code base and reference existing code.
If you want to add a new dependency to any component in Marker, please first ask in the issue if the dependency in question will be accepted.
Please ensure that you've also read Marker's Style Guide.
Marker is mostly tested by printing the AST notes. Please check out the marker_uilints
crate for more information on how:
Once you believe that your update is ready, please create a pull request in the rust-marker/marker repository. All relevant information should be included in your PR description. A maintainer will assign themselves to your PR. If you haven't gotten a response within a week, please ping someone from the team.
Every PR is tested to ensure that all tests pass, the documentation can be built, everything is formatted, and relevant crates can be built on the stable toolchain. If any CI check fails, please try to fix it. The log will usually contain information on how to best approach the problem. You can also ask for help in the pull request.
The CI only runs on Ubuntu. Only the final merge is run on all supported platforms to save CI time. If your change should be tested on all platforms early, you can ping a maintainer to kick off a test run.
The current versions of Marker are intended for testing. All feedback is appreciated, ranging from the first impression to a report of what you like and dislike. Marker relies on feedback to improve. The goal is to create the best linting tool that feels good and welcoming to everyone, and this can't be done without the support of the community.
The following is a small collection of ways you can test Marker right now:
-
Run Marker
Simply run Marker on any Rust project you can find and report bugs or unexpected behavior. Once you've installed Marker, you can use the following command to run Marker with the
marker_lints
lint crate:
```sh
cargo marker --lints "marker_lints = '0.4.3'"
```
If you find any bugs or unexpected behavior, please [create an issue]. [rust-marker/marker#198] is a collection of all crates that were linted successfully. You can also add your own crates to the ever-growing list by commenting on the issue.
-
Write a Lint
Marker is an interface for creating lints. The linting API is an essential part of Marker that should feel natural and clear. If you have the time, please just try to create a lint. Write down what features were hard to find or are just missing completely right now.
If you need a lint idea, you can potentially pick a user story for Marker or create a lint based on an existing Clippy lint.
It would also be a big help if you could add the lint to the example lints repository.
-
Fuzz Marker
All public interfaces of Marker should be resilient and, in the worst case, terminate with a helpful error message. One way to test Marker is to just call every function in the public interface with every input you can think of.
If you find any bugs or unexpected behavior, please create an issue.
Software engineering and open-source are team sports. Pull requests are intended to collect feedback and discuss changes before they're added to the master branch. Any feedback or suggestions are valued and treated equally. Please don't hesitate to involve yourself in discussions on pull requests.
Marker uses a Rebase Workflow, meaning that all branches, besides the master
branch, should be updated using a rebase. This workflow makes the git history linear and easier to follow. It also aligns Marker with other Rust projects.
This policy means that PRs with merge commits will generally not be merged. Instead, you'll be asked to remove the merge commits and update your branch with a rebase. You can still create a PR to get early feedback or support.
You can also check out rustc's documentation about rebasing and this workflow:
To better track what component of Marker has been affected by a commit, it's recommended to start the commit message with the name of the component or area. As an example, if you update an expression in the API, the message could be API: Update `xyz` expression
, clearly indicating that the commit targets the API. The following prefixes are commonly used:
API
: Changes targeting the base API (themarker_api
crate)utils
: Changes targeting additional utilities for the API (themarker_utils
crate)cargo
: Changes targeting Cargo's CLI (thecargo_marker
crate)adapter
: Changes targeting the adapter for drivers (themarker_adapter
crate)rustc
: Changes targeting rustc's driver (themarker_rustc_driver
crate)uitest
: Changes to Marker's ui-test setup (themarker_uitest
crate)lints
: Changes to lints for Marker (themarker_lints
crate)uilints
: Changes to Marker's uilints for testing (themarker_uilints
crate)Doc
: Any documentation updatesCI
: Any CI updatesChore
: General chores that target basically everything, like releases and nightly bumps
It's generally also recommended to split changes based on the area. If you, for instance, add a new expression to Marker, you can first commit the API changes (including doc comments) and then add the rustc backend and tests in a second commit. For example, adding the cool
expression might have this history:
API: Add new `cool` expression to the API
Rustc: Backend for the `cool` expression
Changes affecting multiple components can either just name the main area or list multiple:
- Like this:
API: Add `MarkerContext::something` function
- Or this:
API, adapter, rustc: Add `MarkerContext::something` function
Everything in Marker should be formatted with rustfmt, this is also actively checked in the CI. You can format your code with the following command:
cargo fmt
rustfmt currently struggles with if-let chains. As a result, functions with these are not automatically formatted. If you use them, please make sure to manually format the function as best as you can.
Contributing should be fun. Public, user-facing documentation for Marker should be written in a serious manner. In internal functions or UI tests, it's fine to include jokes, puns, or leave some comments about the journey that led you to this magnificent yet horrifying hack that still somehow works.
The repository already contains some small easter eggs, admittedly in the weird humor of @xFrednet, but the point still stands. Let's develop Marker together and have fun at the same time. :D
If you have a question or need assistance with your contribution, don't hesitate to ask! You're always welcome to create an issue or a PR. Using a public channel allows future contributors to also find the information if they get stuck.
You can also contact me, @xFrednet, directly:
- @xFrednet on rust-lang's Zulip
- @xFrednet on Discord
- Or per e-mail: [email protected]
Rust-marker is distributed under the terms of the MIT or Apache License (Version 2.0). All contributions fall under these licenses, and as such, it's expected that you authored 100% of the content you contribute and that you have the necessary rights to the content.