CONTRIBUTING

Contributing to LF OS

Woah, you wanna contribute? You don't know how happy that will make me o.o

Here are some guidelines, infos where to find help and stuff.

Canonical sources

The main project location is at https://praios.lf-net.org/littlefox/lf-os_amd64. There is also an issue tracker and CI system, building all the branches on changes and also building the docs. Sources are mirrored to https://github.com/LittleFox94/lf-os_amd64.

Docs

Canocical documentation source for the main development branch is at https://littlefox.narf.press/lf-os_amd64. The HTMLs are generated automagically by Doxygen from the contents of the doc directory and comments in the code.

Speaking about comments in the code: please use documentation comments on your new functions in the header files. I know I don't do this very often myself, but I try to.

Docs are probably missing a lot and might be outdated. This is a single-person project right now after all x.x I'm always available to chat, via IRC (Freenode LittleFox), Twitter (@0x0a_fox) and whatever other contact channel you may find. Don't feel bad for asking! If you have to ask, there are docs missing - so it's my fault, not yours.

Language

Main human language is english, used for the docs, commit changelogs and stuff. Important: be a good person, don't make me have to write a code of conduct. I will if neccessary (if you need there to be one before contributing, tell me, it's neccessary then (even if you end up not contributing after all - that's ok)).

Also try to be nice in comments, changelogs and alike, tho I can totally relate to just fsck everything .. let's keep it to a minimum, ok? :)

Code style

The code style in LF OS is a slight but not total mess. In general, code is preferred to look something like this:

void foo(char* bar, const char* baz) {
    int a   = 42;
    int xyz = 23;
 
    if(bar && ! baz) {
        return;
    }
    else {
        kprintf(baz, bar);
    }
}

Testing

There is some unit test infrastructure for generic components in the kernel, we need more infra. Please run the test target before submitting code, also please test if LF OS is still starting - with run and run-kvm targets - the latter one catching more errors (alignment issues, uninitialized memory, ..).

Sending your changes to me

Github pull requests are accepted, as are diffs sent by email to me (look in git log for my address) or you creating an account on my Gitlab instance and create a merge request there. You can also send me a link to your repo, asking me to merge it - a real merge request ^^

Perks of contributing (and a danger)

You will forever be in the git log of the project (beware: this could also be a bad thing for you).

After something you made is accepted into the main development branch, you can send me a physical address to send you some stickers (in natural habitat) - as long as I have some ^^'