doc/Contributing

= Contributing to Wayland =

== Sending patches ==

Patches should be sent to wayland-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, using
git send-email. See git's documentation for help [1].

The first line of a commit message should contain a prefix indicating
what part is affected by the patch followed by one sentence that
describes the change. For examples:

    protocol: Support scaled outputs and surfaces

and

    doc: generate server documentation from XML too

If in doubt what prefix to use, look at other commits that change the
same file(s) as the patch being sent.

The body of the commit message should describe what the patch changes
and why, and also note any particular side effects. This shouldn't be
empty on most of the cases. It shouldn't take a lot of effort to write
a commit message for an obvious change, so an empty commit message
body is only acceptable if the questions "What?" and "Why" are already
answered on the one-line summary.

The lines of the commit message should have at most 76 characters, to
cope with the way git log presents them.

See [2] for a recommend reading on writing commit messages.

== Coding style ==

You should follow the style of the file you're editing. In general, we
try to follow the rules below.

- indent with tabs, and a tab is always 8 characters wide
- opening braces are on the same line as the if statement;
- no braces in an if-body with just one statement;
- if one of the branches of an if-else codition has braces, than the
  other branch should also have braces;
- there is always an empty line between variable declarations and the
  code;

static int
my_function(void)
{
	int a = 0;

	if (a)
		b();
	else
		c();

	if (a) {
		b();
		c();
	} else {
		d();
	}
}

- lines should be less than 80 characters wide;
- when breaking lines with functions calls, the parameters are aligned
  with the opening parenthesis;
- when assigning a variable with the result of a function call, if the
  line would be longer we break it around the equal '=' sign if it makes
  sense;

	long_variable_name =
		function_with_a_really_long_name(parameter1, parameter2,
						 parameter3, parameter4);

	x = function_with_a_really_long_name(parameter1, parameter2,
					     parameter3, parameter4);

== References ==

	[1] http://git-scm.com/documentation

	[2] http://who-t.blogspot.de/2009/12/on-commit-messages.html