CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to AngularJS

We'd love for you to contribute to our source code and to make AngularJS even better than it is today! Here are the guidelines we'd like you to follow:

• Code of Conduct
• Question or Problem?
• Issues and Bugs
• Feature Requests
• Submission Guidelines
• Coding Rules
• Commit Message Guidelines
• Signing the CLA
• Further Info

Code of Conduct

Help us keep Angular open and inclusive. Please read and follow our Code of Conduct.

Got a Question or Problem?

If you have questions about how to use AngularJS, please direct these to the Google Group discussion list or StackOverflow. We are also available on IRC and Gitter.

Found an Issue?

If you find a bug in the source code or a mistake in the documentation, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. Even better you can submit a Pull Request with a fix.

Localization Issues: Angular.js uses the Google Closure I18N library to generate its own I18N files (the ngLocale module). This means that any changes to these files would be lost the next time that we import the library. Since the Closure library i18n data is itself auto-generated from the data of the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) project, errors in the data should be reported there. See also the Closure guide to i18n changes.

Please see the Submission Guidelines below.

Want a Feature?

You can request a new feature by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. If you would like to implement a new feature then consider what kind of change it is:

• Major Changes that you wish to contribute to the project should be discussed first on our dev mailing list or IRC so that we can better coordinate our efforts, prevent duplication of work, and help you to craft the change so that it is successfully accepted into the project.
• Small Changes can be crafted and submitted to the GitHub Repository as a Pull Request.

Want a Doc Fix?

If you want to help improve the docs, it's a good idea to let others know what you're working on to minimize duplication of effort. Create a new issue (or comment on a related existing one) to let others know what you're working on.

For large fixes, please build and test the documentation before submitting the PR to be sure you haven't accidentally introduced any layout or formatting issues. You should also make sure that your commit message starts with "docs" and follows the Commit Message Guidelines outlined below.

If you're just making a small change, don't worry about filing an issue first. Use the friendly blue "Improve this doc" button at the top right of the doc page to fork the repository in-place and make a quick change on the fly. When naming the commit, it is advised to follow the commit message guidelines below, by starting the commit message with docs and referencing the filename. Since this is not obvious and some changes are made on the fly, this is not strictly necessary and we will understand if this isn't done the first few times.

Submission Guidelines

Submitting an Issue

Before you submit your issue search the archive, maybe your question was already answered.

If your issue appears to be a bug, and hasn't been reported, open a new issue. Help us to maximize the effort we can spend fixing issues and adding new features, by not reporting duplicate issues. Providing the following information will increase the chances of your issue being dealt with quickly:

• Overview of the Issue - if an error is being thrown a non-minified stack trace helps
• Motivation for or Use Case - explain why this is a bug for you
• Angular Version(s) - is it a regression?
• Browsers and Operating System - is this a problem with all browsers or only specific ones?
• Reproduce the Error - provide a live example (using Plunker or JSFiddle) or an unambiguous set of steps.
• Related Issues - has a similar issue been reported before?
• Suggest a Fix - if you can't fix the bug yourself, perhaps you can point to what might be causing the problem (line of code or commit)

Here is a great example of a well defined issue: angular#5069

If you get help, help others. Good karma rulez!

Submitting a Pull Request

Before you submit your pull request consider the following guidelines:

• Search GitHub for an open or closed Pull Request that relates to your submission. You don't want to duplicate effort.

• Please sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before sending pull requests. We cannot accept code without this.

• Make your changes in a new git branch:

  git checkout -b my-fix-branch master

• Create your patch, including appropriate test cases.

• Follow our Coding Rules.

• Run the full Angular test suite, as described in the developer documentation, and ensure that all tests pass.

• Commit your changes using a descriptive commit message that follows our commit message conventions and passes our commit message presubmit hook (validate-commit-msg.js). Adherence to the commit message conventions is required, because release notes are automatically generated from these messages.

  git commit -a

  Note: the optional commit -a command line option will automatically "add" and "rm" edited files.

• Build your changes locally to ensure all the tests pass:

  grunt test

• Push your branch to GitHub:

  git push origin my-fix-branch

In GitHub, send a pull request to angular:master. If we suggest changes, then:

• Make the required updates.
• Re-run the Angular test suite to ensure tests are still passing.
• Commit your changes to your branch (e.g. my-fix-branch).
• Push the changes to your GitHub repository (this will update your Pull Request).

If the PR gets too outdated we may ask you to rebase and force push to update the PR:

git rebase master -i
git push origin my-fix-branch -f

WARNING: Squashing or reverting commits and force-pushing thereafter may remove GitHub comments on code that were previously made by you or others in your commits. Avoid any form of rebasing unless necessary.

That's it! Thank you for your contribution!

After your pull request is merged

After your pull request is merged, you can safely delete your branch and pull the changes from the main (upstream) repository:

• Delete the remote branch on GitHub either through the GitHub web UI or your local shell as follows:

  git push origin --delete my-fix-branch

• Check out the master branch:

  git checkout master -f

• Delete the local branch:

  git branch -D my-fix-branch

• Update your master with the latest upstream version:

  git pull --ff upstream master

Coding Rules

To ensure consistency throughout the source code, keep these rules in mind as you are working:

• All features or bug fixes must be tested by one or more specs.
• All public API methods must be documented with ngdoc, an extended version of jsdoc (we added support for markdown and templating via @ngdoc tag). To see how we document our APIs, please check out the existing ngdocs and see this wiki page.
• With the exceptions listed below, we follow the rules contained in Google's JavaScript Style Guide:
  • Do not use namespaces: Instead, wrap the entire angular code base in an anonymous closure and export our API explicitly rather than implicitly.
  • Wrap all code at 100 characters.
  • Instead of complex inheritance hierarchies, we prefer simple objects. We use prototypal inheritance only when absolutely necessary.
  • We love functions and closures and, whenever possible, prefer them over objects.
  • To write concise code that can be better minified, we use aliases internally that map to the external API. See our existing code to see what we mean.
  • We don't go crazy with type annotations for private internal APIs unless it's an internal API that is used throughout AngularJS. The best guidance is to do what makes the most sense.

Git Commit Guidelines

We have very precise rules over how our git commit messages can be formatted. This leads to more readable messages that are easy to follow when looking through the project history. But also, we use the git commit messages to generate the AngularJS change log.

The commit message formatting can be added using a typical git workflow or through the use of a CLI wizard (Commitizen). To use the wizard, run yarn run commit in your terminal after staging your changes in git.

Commit Message Format

Each commit message consists of a header, a body and a footer. The header has a special format that includes a type, a scope and a subject:

<type>(<scope>): <subject>
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>

The header is mandatory and the scope of the header is optional.

Any line of the commit message cannot be longer 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.

Revert

If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with revert: , followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: This reverts commit <hash>., where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.

Type

Must be one of the following:

• feat: A new feature
• fix: A bug fix
• docs: Documentation only changes
• style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
• refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
• perf: A code change that improves performance
• test: Adding missing or correcting existing tests
• chore: Changes to the build process or auxiliary tools and libraries such as documentation generation

Scope

The scope could be anything specifying place of the commit change. For example $location, $browser, $compile, $rootScope, ngHref, ngClick, ngView, etc...

You can use * when the change affects more than a single scope.

Subject

The subject contains succinct description of the change:

• use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
• don't capitalize first letter
• no dot (.) at the end

Body

Just as in the subject, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes". The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.

Footer

The footer should contain any information about Breaking Changes and is also the place to reference GitHub issues that this commit closes.

Breaking Changes should start with the word BREAKING CHANGE: with a space or two newlines. The rest of the commit message is then used for this.

A detailed explanation can be found in this document.

Signing the CLA

Please sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before sending pull requests. For any code changes to be accepted, the CLA must be signed. It's a quick process, we promise!

• For individuals we have a simple click-through form.
• For corporations we'll need you to print, sign and one of scan+email, fax or mail the form.

Further Information

You can find out more detailed information about contributing in the AngularJS documentation.