Contribution Guidelines

How to contribute to Koala Plot

First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute!

The following is a set of guidelines for contributing to Koala Plot and its repositories, which are hosted in the KoalaPlot Organization on GitHub. These are mostly guidelines, not rules. Use your best judgment, and feel free to propose changes to this document in a pull request.

Table Of Contents

I don’t want to read this whole thing, I just have a question!!!

What should I know before I get started?

How Can I Contribute?

Styleguides

I don’t want to read this whole thing I just have a question!!!

** Note:** Please don’t file an issue to ask a question. You’ll get faster results by using the resources below.

We have an official message board with a detailed FAQ and where the community chimes in with helpful advice if you have questions.

What should I know before I get started?

Multiplatform & Compose Centric

Koala Plot is a multiplatform plotting and charting library with an objective to maintain the same interface and feature set across all supported platforms. Therefore, new contributions should address any platform differences in order to eliminate platform variations in the publicly exposed API.

The library is also Compose centric, and seeks to adhere to conventions adopted by the Compose API .

API Stability

This project adheres to Semantic Versioning to provide API stability between releases and a clear deprecation and backwards compatibility change process.

How Can I Contribute?

Reporting Bugs

This section guides you through submitting a bug report. Following these guidelines helps maintainers and the community understand your report :pencil:, reproduce the behavior :computer:, and find related reports :mag_right:.

Before creating bug reports, please check this list as you might find out that you don’t need to create one. When you are creating a bug report, please include as many details as possible.

Note: If you find a Closed issue that seems like it is the same thing that you’re experiencing, open a new issue and include a link to the original issue in the body of your new one.

Before Submitting A Bug Report

  • Check the discussions for a list of common questions and problems.
  • Perform a cursory search to see if the problem has already been reported. If it has and the issue is still open, add a comment to the existing issue instead of opening a new one.

How Do I Submit A (Good) Bug Report?

Bugs are tracked as GitHub issues. After you’ve determined which repository your bug is related to, create an issue on that repository and provide the following information.

Explain the problem and include additional details to help maintainers reproduce the problem:

  • Use a clear and descriptive title for the issue to identify the problem.
  • Describe the exact steps which reproduce the problem in as many details as possible.
  • Provide specific examples to demonstrate the steps. Include links to files or GitHub projects, or copy/pasteable snippets, which you use in those examples. If you’re providing snippets in the issue, use Markdown code blocks.
  • Describe the behavior you observed after following the steps and point out what exactly is the problem with that behavior.
  • Explain which behavior you expected to see instead and why.
  • Include screenshots and animated GIFs which show you following the described steps and clearly demonstrate the problem. You can use this tool to record GIFs on macOS and Windows, and this tool or this tool on Linux.
  • If you’re reporting that Koala Plot threw an exception, include a stack trace from the operating system. Include the stack trace in the issue in a code block, a file attachment , or put it in a gist and provide the link to that gist.

Provide more context by answering these questions:

  • Did the problem start happening recently (e.g. after updating to a new version) or was this always a problem?
  • If the problem started happening recently, can you reproduce the problem in an older version?
  • What’s the most recent version in which the problem doesn’t happen?
  • Can you reliably reproduce the issue? If not, provide details about how often the problem happens and under which conditions it normally happens.

Include details about your configuration and environment:

  • Which version of Koala Plot, Kotlin, and other libraries are you using?
  • What’s the name and version of the OS you’re using?
  • Does it occur on all platforms or only some of them? Which ones and what versions?

Suggesting Enhancements

This section guides you through submitting an enhancement suggestion for Koala Plot, including completely new features and minor improvements to existing functionality. Following these guidelines helps maintainers and the community understand your suggestion :pencil: and find related suggestions :mag_right:.

Before creating enhancement suggestions, please check this list as you might find out that you don’t need to create one. When you are creating an enhancement suggestion, please include as many details as possible.

Before Submitting An Enhancement Suggestion

  • Perform a cursory search to see if the enhancement has already been suggested. If it has, add a comment to the existing issue instead of opening a new one.

How Do I Submit A (Good) Enhancement Suggestion?

Enhancement suggestions are tracked as GitHub issues. After you’ve determined which repository your enhancement suggestion is related to, create an issue on that repository and provide the following information:

  • Use a clear and descriptive title for the issue to identify the suggestion.
  • Provide a step-by-step description of the suggested enhancement in as many details as possible.
  • Provide specific examples to demonstrate the steps. Include copy/pasteable snippets which you use in those examples, as Markdown code blocks.
  • Describe the current behavior and explain which behavior you expected to see instead and why.
  • Include screenshots and animated GIFs which help you demonstrate the steps or point out the part of Koala Plot which the suggestion is related to. You can use this tool to record GIFs on macOS and Windows, and this tool or this tool on Linux.
  • Explain why this enhancement would be useful to most Koala Plot.
  • List some other charting libraries or applications where this enhancement exists.
  • Specify which version of Koala Plot you’re using.
  • Specify the name and version of the OS you’re using.

Your First Code Contribution

Unsure where to begin contributing to Koala Plot? You can start by looking through these beginner and help-wanted issues:

  • [Beginner issues][beginner] - issues which should only require a few lines of code, and a test or two.
  • [Help wanted issues][help-wanted] - issues which should be a bit more involved than beginner issues.

Both issue lists are sorted by total number of comments. While not perfect, number of comments is a reasonable proxy for impact a given change will have.

Pull Requests

The process described here has several goals:

  • Maintain Koala Plot quality
  • Fix problems that are important to users
  • Engage the community in working toward the best possible KiwkCharts
  • Enable a sustainable system for Koala Plot maintainers to review contributions

Please follow these steps to have your contribution considered by the maintainers:

  1. Follow the styleguides
  2. Use concise and descriptive pull request titles
  3. Provide a short summary of your changes in the pull request description, noting any related issues that your pull request solves
  4. Avoid multiple unrelated changes in a single pull request
  5. Include an update to the change log, if necessary, in accordance with the keep a changelog guidelines
  6. After you submit your pull request, verify that all status checks are passing
    What if the status checks are failing?If a status check is failing, and you believe that the failure is unrelated to your change, please leave a comment on the pull request explaining why you believe the failure is unrelated. A maintainer will re-run the status check for you. If we conclude that the failure was a false positive, then we will open an issue to track that problem with our status check suite.

While the prerequisites above must be satisfied prior to having your pull request reviewed, the reviewer(s) may ask you to complete additional design work, tests, or other changes before your pull request can be ultimately accepted.

Styleguides

Git Commit Messages

  • Use the present tense (“Add feature” not “Added feature”)
  • Use the imperative mood (“Move cursor to…” not “Moves cursor to…”)
  • Limit the first line to 72 characters or less
  • Reference issues and pull requests liberally after the first line
  • When only changing documentation, include [ci skip] in the commit title
  • Consider starting the commit message with an applicable emoji:
    • :art: :art: when improving the format/structure of the code
    • :racehorse: :racehorse: when improving performance
    • :non-potable_water: :non-potable_water: when plugging memory leaks
    • :memo: :memo: when writing docs
    • :penguin: :penguin: when fixing something on Linux
    • :apple: :apple: when fixing something on macOS
    • :checkered_flag: :checkered_flag: when fixing something on Windows
    • :bug: :bug: when fixing a bug
    • :fire: :fire: when removing code or files
    • :green_heart: :green_heart: when fixing the CI build
    • :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: when adding tests
    • :lock: :lock: when dealing with security
    • :arrow_up: :arrow_up: when upgrading dependencies
    • :arrow_down: :arrow_down: when downgrading dependencies
    • :shirt: :shirt: when removing linter warnings

Kotlin Styleguide & Coding Standards

In general, Koala Plot uses the Kotlin Coding Conventions with some minor changes, notably to align with Compose conventions .

All code is scanned using detekt, including ktlint, to enforce code standards, best practices, and formatting. Use of .editorconfig and the Detekt IDEA Plugin helps to provide real-time violation feedback in the IDE, but please also run the detekt job directly to ensure compliance before submitting a pull request.

./gradlew detekt

When introducing new public API or changes to existing public API, please be thoughtful about which API should be public and consider using internal or private where possible. Keep in mind Semantic Versioning and how your public API changes will impact versioning and maintainability.

Documentation Styleguide

Please document all public APIs using KDoc comments, including at the minimum:

  • A brief description of the class, method, function, or object
  • Include @param and @return tags for all parameters
  • If you explicitly throw any exceptions, include an @throws tag

Documentation is also highly encouraged for all internal and private members, and within code, especially when complex algorithms, layouts, or calculations are being performed.

Dokka is used to generate API documentation. You can generate a documentation set to review your comments before submitting a pull request with the command:

./gradlew dokkaCustomFormat

The generated documentation is placed in ./build/docs/api.


Last modified November 22, 2023: Add website (6de4820)