Please check if your PR fulfills the following requirements:
- The commit message follows our guidelines
- Tests for the changes have been added (for bug fixes/features)
- Docs have been added/updated (for bug fixes/features)
- Code has been linted and follows the project style guidelines
What kind of change does this PR introduce? (Bug fix, feature, docs update, ...)
What is the current behavior? (You can also link to an open issue here)
What is the new behavior (if this is a feature change)?
Does this PR introduce a breaking change? (What changes might users need to make in their application due to this PR?)
The title of the pull request should be prefixed by the component or area that the pull request affects. Valid areas are:
- Build: for changes to the build-system
- Consensus: for changes to consensus critical code
- Depends: for changes to depends
- Docs: for changes to the documentation
- GUI: for changes to raven-qt
- Mining: for changes to the mining code
- Net or P2P: for changes to the peer-to-peer network code
- RPC/REST/ZMQ: for changes to the RPC, REST or ZMQ APIs
- Scripts and tools: for changes to the scripts and tools
- Tests: for changes to the raven unit tests or QA tests
- Trivial: should only be used for PRs that do not change generated executable code. Notably, refactors (change of function arguments and code reorganization) and changes in behavior should not be marked as trivial.
- Utils and libraries: for changes to the utils and libraries
- Wallet: for changes to the wallet code
Consensus: Add new opcode for RIP-XXXX OP_CHECKAWESOMESIGNet: Automatically create hidden service, listen on TorGUI: Add feed bump buttonTrivial: Fix typo in init.cpp
Note: Translations should not be submitted as pull requests, please see the Translation Process for more information on helping with translations.
If a pull request is specifically not to be considered for merging (yet) please prefix the title with [WIP] or use Tasks Lists in the body of the pull request to indicate tasks are pending.
The body of the pull request should contain enough description about what the patch does together with any justification/reasoning. You should include references to any discussions (for example, other tickets or mailing list discussions).
At this stage, one should expect comments and reviews from other contributors. You can add more commits to your pull request by committing them locally and pushing to your fork until you have satisfied all feedback.
If your pull request is accepted for merging, you may be asked by a maintainer to squash and/or rebase your commits before it will be merged.
If you have problems with squashing (or other workflows with git), you can alternatively enable "Allow edits from maintainers" in the right GitHub sidebar and ask for help in the pull request.
Please refrain from creating several pull requests for the same change. Use the pull request that is already open (or was created earlier) to amend changes. This preserves the discussion and review that happened earlier for the respective change set.
The length of time required for peer review is unpredictable and will vary from pull request to pull request.
Patchsets should always be focused. For example, a pull request could add a feature, fix a bug, or refactor code; but not a mixture. Please also avoid super pull requests which attempt to do too much, are overly large, or overly complex as this makes review difficult.
When adding a new feature, thought must be given to the long-term technical debt and maintenance that the feature may require after inclusion. Before proposing a new feature that will require maintenance, please consider if you are willing to maintain it (including bug fixing). If features get orphaned with no maintainer in the future, they may be removed by the Repository Maintainer.
Refactoring is a necessary part of any software project's evolution. The following guidelines cover refactoring pull requests for the project.
There are three categories of refactoring: code only moves, code style fixes, and code refactoring. In general, refactoring pull requests should not mix these three kinds of activity in order to make refactoring pull requests easy to review and uncontroversial. In all cases, refactoring PRs must not change the behavior of code within the pull request (bugs must be preserved as is).
Project maintainers aim for a quick turnaround on refactoring pull requests, so where possible, keep them short, uncomplex, and easy to verify.
Pull requests that refactor the code should not be made by new contributors. It requires a certain level of experience to know where the code belongs and to understand the full ramifications (including rebase effort of open pull requests).
Trivial pull requests or pull requests that refactor the code with no clear benefits may be immediately closed by the maintainers to reduce unnecessary workload on reviewing.
The following applies to code changes to the Ravencoin project (and related projects) and is not to be confused with overall Ravencoin Network Protocol consensus changes.
Whether a pull request is merged into Ravencoin rests with the project merge maintainers and ultimately the project lead.
Maintainers will take into consideration if a patch is in line with the general principles of the project; meets the minimum standards for inclusion; and will judge the general consensus of contributors.
In general, all pull requests must:
- Have a clear use case, fix a demonstrable bug, or serve the greater good of the project (for example refactoring for modularisation);
- Be well peer-reviewed;
- Have unit tests and functional tests where appropriate;
- Follow code style guidelines;
- Not break the existing test suite;
- Where bugs are fixed, where possible, there should be unit tests demonstrating the bug and also proving the fix. This helps prevent regression.
Patches that change Ravencoin consensus rules are considerably more involved than normal because they affect the entire ecosystem and so must be preceded by extensive mailing list discussions and have a numbered RIP. While each case will be different, one should be prepared to expend more time and effort than for other kinds of patches because of increased peer review and consensus-building requirements.
Anyone may participate in peer review which is expressed by comments in the pull request. Typically, reviewers will review the code for obvious errors, test out the patch set, and opine on the technical merits of the patch. Project maintainers take into account the peer review when determining if there is consensus to merge a pull request (remember that discussions may have been spread out over GitHub, mailing list, and Discord discussions). The following language is used within pull-request comments:
- ACK: "I have tested the code and I agree it should be merged"
- NACK: "I disagree this should be merged", and must be accompanied by sound technical justification (or in certain cases of copyright/patent/licensing issues, legal justification). NACKs without accompanying reasoning may be disregarded
- utACK: "I have not tested the code, but I have reviewed it and it looks OK, I agree it can be merged"
- Concept ACK: "I agree in the general principle of this pull request"
- Nit: Refers to trivial, often non-blocking issues.
Reviewers should include the commit hash which they reviewed in their comments.
Project maintainers reserve the right to weigh the opinions of peer reviewers using common-sense judgment and also may weight based on meritocracy: Those that have demonstrated a deeper commitment and understanding towards the project (over time) or have clear domain expertise may naturally have more weight, as one would expect in all walks of life.
Where a patch set affects consensus critical code, the bar will be set much higher in terms of discussion and peer review requirements, keeping in mind that mistakes could be very costly to the wider community. This includes refactoring of consensus-critical code.
Where a patch set proposes to change the Ravencoin consensus, it must have been discussed extensively, be accompanied by a widely discussed RIP, and have a generally widely perceived technical consensus of being a worthwhile change based on the judgment of the maintainers.
As most reviewers are themselves developers with their own projects, the review process can be quite lengthy, and some amount of patience is required. If you find that you've been waiting for a pull request to be given attention for several months, there may be a number of reasons for this, some of which you can do something about:
- It may be because of a feature freeze due to an upcoming release. During this time, only bug fixes are taken into consideration. If your pull request is a new feature, it will not be prioritized until the release is over. Wait for release.
- It may be because the changes you are suggesting do not appeal to people. Rather than nits and critique, which require effort and means they care enough to spend time on your contribution, thundering silence is a good sign of widespread (mild) dislike of a given change (because people don't assume others won't actually like the proposal). Don't take that personally, though! Instead, take another critical look at what you are suggesting and see if it: changes too much, is too broad, doesn't adhere to the developer notes, is dangerous or insecure, is messily written, etc. Identify and address any of the issues you find. Then ask e.g. on Discord if someone could give their opinion on the concept itself.
- It may be because your code is too complex for all but a few people. And those people may not have realized your pull request even exists. A great way to find people who are qualified and care about the code you are touching is the Git Blame feature. Simply find the person touching the code you are touching before you and see if you can find them and give them a nudge. Don't be incessant about the nudging though.
- Finally, if all else fails, ask on Discord or elsewhere for someone to give your pull request a look. If you think you've been waiting an unreasonably long amount of time (month+) for no particular reason (few lines changed, etc), this is totally fine. Try to return the favor when someone else is asking for feedback on their code, and universe balances out.
The RavenQT-SIG selects a release manager for each Ravencoin release.
By contributing to this repository, you agree to license your work under the MIT license unless specified otherwise in contrib/debian/copyright or at the top of the file itself. Any work contributed where you are not the original author must contain its license header with the original author(s) and source.