HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO OpenSSL
============================

Please visit our [Getting Started] page for other ideas about how to contribute.

  [Getting Started]: <https://openssl-library.org/community/getting-started>

Development is done on GitHub in the [openssl/openssl] repository.

  [openssl/openssl]: <https://github.com/openssl/openssl>

To request a new feature, ask a question, or report a bug,
please open an [issue on GitHub](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues).

To submit a patch or implement a new feature, please open a
[pull request on GitHub](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pulls).
If you are thinking of making a large contribution,
open an issue for it before starting work, to get comments from the community.
Someone may be already working on the same thing,
or there may be special reasons why a feature is not implemented.

Similarly, if you plan to submit many pull requests, please start with
a representative sample (no more than 3 or 4) and open an issue
explaining your process. The OpenSSL project has limited resources,
especially when it comes to reviewers, so we appreciate advanced
communication before submitting many pull requests. In addition,
contributors should personally evaluate potential patches generated by
automated tools.

Provide a clear description of the issue or feature being addressed,
including any relevant implementation details and, for performance
improvements, benchmark results.

Pull requests and commits should be self-contained, enabling readers to
understand what changed and why without needing to reference related
issues or having prior knowledge.  Commit messages should include all
relevant details to help future contributors follow the git history,
with clear explanations of what is changing and why.  Long descriptions
are encouraged if they aid understanding.  Commit message titles (their
first line) should be kept to 50-70 characters if possible.

To make it easier to review and accept your pull request, please follow these
guidelines:

 1. Anything other than a trivial contribution requires a [Contributor
    License Agreement] (CLA), giving us permission to use your code.
    If your contribution is too small to require a CLA (e.g., fixing a spelling
    mistake), then place the text "`CLA: trivial`" on a line by itself below
    the rest of your commit message separated by an empty line, like this:

    ```
        One-line summary of trivial change

        Optional main body of commit message. It might contain a sentence
        or two explaining the trivial change.

        CLA: trivial
    ```

    It is not sufficient to only place the text "`CLA: trivial`" in the GitHub
    pull request description.

    [Contributor License Agreement]: <https://www.openssl.org/policies/cla.html>

    To amend a missing "`CLA: trivial`" line after submission, do the following:

    ```
        git commit --amend
        # add the line, save and quit the editor
        git push -f [<repository> [<branch>]]
    ```

 2. All source files should start with the following text (with
    appropriate comment characters at the start of each line and the
    year(s) updated):

    ```
        Copyright 20xx-20yy The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.

        Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the "License").  You may not use
        this file except in compliance with the License.  You can obtain a copy
        in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at
        https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html
    ```

 3. Patches should be as current as possible; expect to have to rebase
    often. We do not accept merge commits, you will have to remove them
    (usually by rebasing) before it will be acceptable.

 4. Code provided should follow our [coding style] and [documentation policy]
    and compile without warnings.
    There is a [Perl tool](util/check-format.pl) that helps
    finding code formatting mistakes and other coding style nits.
    Where `gcc` or `clang` is available, you should use the
    `--strict-warnings` `Configure` option.  OpenSSL compiles on many varied
    platforms: try to ensure you only use portable features.
    Clean builds via GitHub Actions are required. They are started automatically
    whenever a PR is created or updated by committers.

    [coding style]: https://openssl-library.org/policies/technical/coding-style/
    [documentation policy]: https://openssl-library.org/policies/technical/documentation-policy/

 5. When at all possible, code contributions should include tests. These can
    either be added to an existing test, or completely new.  Please see
    [test/README.md](test/README.md) for information on the test framework.

 6. New features or changed functionality must include
    documentation. Please look at the `.pod` files in `doc/man[1357]` for
    examples of our style. Run `make doc-nits` to make sure that your
    documentation changes are clean.

 7. For user visible changes (API changes, behaviour changes, ...),
    consider adding a note in [CHANGES.md](CHANGES.md).
    This could be a summarising description of the change, and could
    explain the grander details.
    Have a look through existing entries for inspiration.
    Please note that this is NOT simply a copy of git-log one-liners.
    Also note that security fixes get an entry in [CHANGES.md](CHANGES.md).
    This file helps users get more in-depth information of what comes
    with a specific release without having to sift through the higher
    noise ratio in git-log.

 8. Guidelines on how to integrate error output of new crypto library modules
    can be found in [crypto/err/README.md](crypto/err/README.md).
