1 Contributing to Rust-Lightning
2 ==============================
4 The Rust-Lightning project operates an open contributor model where anyone is
5 welcome to contribute towards development in the form of peer review, documentation,
8 Anyone is invited to contribute without regard to technical experience, "expertise", OSS
9 experience, age, or other concern. However, the development of cryptocurrencies demands a
10 high-level of rigor, adversarial thinking, thorough testing and risk-minimization.
11 Any bug may cost users real money. That being said, we deeply welcome people contributing
12 for the first time to an open source project or pick up Rust while contributing. Don't be shy,
15 Communications Channels
16 -----------------------
18 Communication about Rust-Lightning happens primarily on #ldk-dev on the
19 [LDK slack](http://www.lightningdevkit.org/), but also #rust-bitcoin on IRC Freenode.
21 Discussion about code base improvements happens in GitHub issues and on pull
24 Major projects are tracked [here](https://github.com/lightningdevkit/rust-lightning/projects).
25 Major milestones are tracked [here](https://github.com/lightningdevkit/rust-lightning/milestones?direction=asc&sort=title&state=open).
30 First and foremost, start small.
32 This doesn't mean don't be ambitious with the breadth and depth of your contributions but rather
33 understand the project culture before investing an asymmetric number of hours on
34 development compared to your merged work.
36 Browsing through the [meeting minutes](https://github.com/lightningdevkit/rust-lightning/wiki/Meetings)
37 is a good first step. You will learn who is working on what, how releases are drafted, what are the
38 pending tasks to deliver, where you can contribute review bandwidth, etc.
40 Even if you have an extensive open source background or sound software engineering skills, consider
41 that the reviewers' comprehension of the code is as much important as technical correctness.
43 It's very welcome to ask for review, either on IRC or LDK Slack. And also for reviewers, it's nice
44 to provide timelines when you hope to fulfill the request while bearing in mind for both sides that's
47 If you're eager to increase the velocity of the dev process, reviewing other contributors work is
48 the best you can do while waiting review on yours.
50 Also, getting familiar with the [glossary](GLOSSARY.md) will streamline discussions with regular contributors.
55 The codebase is maintained using the "contributor workflow" where everyone
56 without exception contributes patch proposals using "pull requests". This
57 facilitates social contribution, easy testing and peer review.
59 To contribute a patch, the workflow is as follows:
62 2. Create topic branch
65 In general commits should be atomic and diffs should be easy to read.
66 For this reason do not mix any formatting fixes or code moves with
67 actual code changes. Further, each commit, individually, should compile
68 and pass tests, in order to ensure git bisect and other automated tools
71 When adding a new feature, like implementing a BOLT spec object, thought
72 must be given to the long term technical debt. Every new features should
73 be covered by functional tests.
75 When refactoring, structure your PR to make it easy to review and don't
76 hesitate to split it into multiple small, focused PRs.
78 The Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) currently is 1.41.1 (enforced by
79 our GitHub Actions). Also, the compatibility for LDK object serialization is
80 currently ensured back to and including crate version 0.0.99 (see the
81 [changelog](CHANGELOG.md)).
83 Commits should cover both the issue fixed and the solution's rationale.
84 These [guidelines](https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/) should be kept in mind.
86 To facilitate communication with other contributors, the project is making use of
87 GitHub's "assignee" field. First check that no one is assigned and then comment
88 suggesting that you're working on it. If someone is already assigned, don't hesitate
89 to ask if the assigned party or previous commenters are still working on it if it has
95 Anyone may participate in peer review which is expressed by comments in the pull
96 request. Typically reviewers will review the code for obvious errors, as well as
97 test out the patch set and opine on the technical merits of the patch. PR should
98 be reviewed first on the conceptual level before focusing on code style or grammar
104 Use tabs. If you want to align lines, use spaces. Any desired alignment should
105 display fine at any tab-length display setting.
107 Our CI enforces [clippy's](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy) default linting
108 [settings](https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-clippy/rust-1.39.0/index.html).
109 This includes all lint groups except for nursery, pedantic, and cargo in addition to allowing the following lints:
110 `erasing_op`, `never_loop`, `if_same_then_else`.
112 If you use rustup, feel free to lint locally, otherwise you can just push to CI for automated linting.
115 rustup component add clippy
119 Significant structures that users persist should always have their serialization methods (usually
120 `Writeable::write` and `ReadableArgs::read`) begin with
121 `write_ver_prefix!()`/`read_ver_prefix!()` calls, and end with calls to
122 `write_tlv_fields!()`/`read_tlv_fields!()`.
124 Updates to the serialized format which has implications for backwards or forwards compatibility
125 must be included in release notes.
130 Security is the primary focus of Rust-Lightning; disclosure of security vulnerabilites
131 helps prevent user loss of funds. If you believe a vulnerability may affect other Lightning
132 implementations, please inform them.
134 Note that Rust-Lightning is currently considered "pre-production" during this time, there
135 is no special handling of security issues. Please simply open an issue on Github.
140 Related to the security aspect, Rust-Lightning developers take testing
141 very seriously. Due to the modular nature of the project, writing new functional
142 tests is easy and good test coverage of the codebase is an important goal. Refactoring
143 the project to enable fine-grained unit testing is also an ongoing effort.
145 Fuzzing is heavily encouraged: you will find all related material under `fuzz/`
147 Mutation testing is work-in-progress; any contribution there would be warmly welcomed.
152 You can learn more about the C/C++ bindings that are made available by reading the
153 [C/C++ Bindings README](lightning-c-bindings/README.md). If you are not using the C/C++ bindings,
154 you likely don't need to worry about them, and during their early experimental phase we are not
155 requiring that pull requests keep the bindings up to date (and, thus, pass the bindings_check CI
156 run). If you wish to ensure your PR passes the bindings generation phase, you should run the
157 `genbindings.sh` script in the top of the directory tree to generate, build, and test C bindings on
163 You may be interested by Jon Atack guide on [How to review Bitcoin Core PRs](https://github.com/jonatack/bitcoin-development/blob/master/how-to-review-bitcoin-core-prs.md)
164 and [How to make Bitcoin Core PRs](https://github.com/jonatack/bitcoin-development/blob/master/how-to-make-bitcoin-core-prs.md).
165 While there are differences between the projects in terms of context and maturity, many
166 of the suggestions offered apply to this project.