Want to hack on openHAB? Awesome! Here are instructions to get you started. They are probably not perfect, please let us know if anything feels wrong or incomplete.
For instructions on setting up your development environment, please see our dedicated IDE setup guide.
We are always thrilled to receive pull requests, and do our best to process them as fast as possible. Not sure if that typo is worth a pull request? Do it! We will appreciate it.
If your pull request is not accepted on the first try, don't be discouraged! If there's a problem with the implementation, hopefully you received feedback on what to improve.
We're trying very hard to keep openHAB lean and focused. We don't want it to do everything for everybody. This means that we might decide against incorporating a new feature. However, there might be a way to implement that feature on top of openHAB.
We recommend discussing your plans in the discussion forum before starting to code - especially for more ambitious contributions. This gives other contributors a chance to point you in the right direction, give feedback on your design, and maybe point out if someone else is working on the same thing.
Any significant improvement should be documented as a GitHub issue before anybody starts working on it.
Please take a moment to check that an issue doesn't already exist documenting your bug report or improvement proposal. If it does, it never hurts to add a quick "+1" or "I have this problem too". This will help prioritize the most common problems and requests.
Fork the repo and make changes on your fork in a feature branch.
Submit unit tests for your changes. openHAB has a great test framework built in; use it! Take a look at existing tests for inspiration. Run the full test suite on your branch before submitting a pull request.
Update the documentation when creating or modifying features. Test your documentation changes for clarity, concision, and correctness, as well as a clean documentation build.
Write clean code. Universally formatted code promotes ease of writing, reading, and maintenance.
Pull requests descriptions should be as clear as possible and include a reference to all the issues that they address.
Pull requests must not contain commits from other users or branches.
Commit messages must start with a capitalized and short summary (max. 50 chars) written in the imperative, followed by an optional, more detailed explanatory text which is separated from the summary by an empty line.
Code review comments may be added to your pull request. Discuss, then make the suggested modifications and push additional commits to your feature branch. Be sure to post a comment after pushing. The new commits will show up in the pull request automatically, but the reviewers will not be notified unless you comment.
Commits that fix or close an issue should include a reference like Fixes #XXX,
which will automatically close the issue when merged.
The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to pass it on as an open-source patch. The rules are pretty simple: if you can certify the below (from developercertificate.org):
Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1
Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
660 York Street, Suite 102,
San Francisco, CA 94110 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
have the right to submit it under the open source license
indicated in the file; or
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
license and I have the right under that license to submit that
work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
in the file; or
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
it.
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
this project or the open source license(s) involved.
then you just add a line to every git commit message:
Signed-off-by: Joe Smith <joe.smith@email.com>
using your real name (sorry, no pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.) and an e-mail address under which you can be reached (sorry, no github noreply e-mail addresses (such as username@users.noreply.github.com) or other non-reachable addresses are allowed).
On the command line you can use git commit -s to sign off the commit.
- Step 1: learn the component inside out
- Step 2: make yourself useful by contributing code, bugfixes, support etc.
- Step 3: volunteer on the discussion group
Don't forget: being a maintainer is a time investment. Make sure you will have time to make yourself available. You don't have to be a maintainer to make a difference on the project!
We want to keep the openHAB community awesome, growing and collaborative. We need your help to keep it that way. To help with this we've come up with some general guidelines for the community as a whole:
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Be nice: Be courteous, respectful and polite to fellow community members: no regional, racial, gender, or other abuse will be tolerated. We like nice people way better than mean ones!
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Encourage diversity and participation: Make everyone in our community feel welcome, regardless of their background and the extent of their contributions, and do everything possible to encourage participation in our community.
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Keep it legal: Basically, don't get us in trouble. Share only content that you own, do not share private or sensitive information, and don't break the law.
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Stay on topic: Make sure that you are posting to the correct channel and avoid off-topic discussions. Remember when you update an issue or respond to an email you are potentially sending to a large number of people. Please consider this before you update. Also remember that nobody likes spam.