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CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing to ALE

  1. Guidelines
  2. Creating Issues
  3. Creating Pull Requests
    1. Adding a New Linter
    2. Adding New Options
  4. Writing Documentation
    1. Documenting New Linters
    2. Editing the Online Documentation
    3. Documenting Linter Options
  5. In Case of Busses

1. Guidelines

Have fun, and work on whatever floats your boat. Take It Easy ™️.

Don't forget to write documentation for whatever it is you are doing. See the "Writing Documentation" section.

Remember to write Vader tests for most of the code you write. You can look at existing Vader tests in the test directory for examples.

When writing code, follow the Google Vimscript Style Guide, and run vint -s on your files to check for most of what the guide mentions and more. If you install this plugin (ALE) and install Vint, it will check your code while you type.

2. Creating Issues

Before creating any issues, please look through the current list of issues and pull requests, and ensure that the issue hasn't already been reported. If an issue has already been reported, but you have some new insight, please add a comment to the existing issue.

Please read the FAQ in the README before creating any issues. A feature you desire may already exist and be documented, or the FAQ might explain how to solve a problem you have already.

Please try and describe any issues reported with as much detail as you can provide about your Vim version, the linter you were trying to run, your operating system, or any other information you think might be helpful.

Please describe your issue in clear, grammatically correct, and easy to understand English. You are more likely to see an issue resolved if others can understand you.

3. Creating Pull Requests

For code you write, make sure to credit yourself at the top of files you add, and probably those you modify. You can write some comments at the top of your VIM files.

" Author: John Smith <[email protected]>
" Description: This file adds support for awesomelinter for the best language ever.

If you want to credit multiple authors, you can comma separate them.

" Author: John Smith <[email protected]>, Jane Doe <https://jane-doe.info>

3.i. Adding a New Linter

If you add a new linter, look for existing handlers first in the handlers directory. One of the handlers there may already be able to handle your lines of output. If you find that your new linter replicates an existing error handler, consider pulling it up into the handlers directory, and use the generic handler in both places.

When you add a linter, make sure the language for the linter and the linter itself are present in the table in the README.md file and in the Vim help file. The programs and linters should be sorted alphabetically in the table and list.

3.ii. Adding New Options

If you add new options to the plugin, make sure to document those new options in the README.md file, and also in the help file. Follow the format of other options in each. Global options should appear in the README file, and in the relevant section in the help file. Options specific to a particular linter should appear in the section for that linter.

Linter options for customizing general argument lists should be named g:ale_<filetype>_<linter>_options, so that all linters can have similar global variable names.

Any options for linters should be set to some default value so it is always easy to see what the default is with :echo g:ale....

4. Writing Documentation

If you are adding new linters, changing the API, adding new options, etc., you must write some documentation describing it in the doc/ale.txt file. New linters must be added to the README.md file too, so other users can get a quick overview of the supported tools.

4.i Documenting New Linters

If you add a new linter to the project, edit the table in the README.md file, and edit the list of linters at the top of the doc/ale.txt file. The linters should be sorted vertically in lexicographic (alphabetical) order by the programming language name or filetype, and the tools for each language should be sorted in lexicographic order horizontally. Sorting in this manner is a fair manner of presenting all of the information in an easy to scan way, without giving some unfair preference to any particular tool or language.

4.ii Editing the Online Documentation

The "online documentation" file used for this project lives in doc/ale.txt. This is the file used for generating :help text inside Vim itself. There are some guidelines to follow for this file.

  1. Keep all text within a column size of 79 characters, inclusive.
  2. Open a section with 79 = or - characters, for headings and subheadings.
  3. Sections should have a single blank line before or after.
  4. Between descriptions of variables/functions/commands, use two blank lines.
  5. Up-indent the description of a variable/function/command by two spaces.
  6. Place tags at the ends of lines, with the final characters on column 79. All of the tags should line up perfectly on the same column as you scan down through the document.
  7. Keep the table of contents balanced so the longest tag link ends on column 79, and so all links line up perfectly on their first character, on the left.

4.iii Documenting Linter Options

For documenting new linter options, please add a new sub-section under the "Linter Specific Options" section describing all of the global options added for each linter, and what the default values of the options are. All global options for linters should be set to some default value. This will allow users to look up the default value easily by typing :echo g:ale_....

5. In Case of Busses

Should the principal author of the ALE project and all collaborators with the required access needed to properly administrate the project on GitHub or any other website either perish or disappear, whether by tragic traffic accident or government abduction, etc., action should be taken to ensure that the project continues. If no one is left to administer the project where it is hosted, please fork the project and nominate someone capable to administer it. Preferably, in such an event, a single fork of the project will replace the original, and life will go on, except the life of whoever vanished, because then they will probably be dead.

Should w0rp suddenly disappear, then he was probably killed in a traffic accident, or the government finally decided to kill him and make it look like suicide. In the latter event, please subvert said government and restore order to the universe, and ensure peace for mankind.