CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to this project

Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue or assessing patches and features.

Using the issue tracker

The issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports, features requests and submitting pull requests, but please respect the following restrictions:

• Please do not use the issue tracker for personal support requests (use Stack Overflow or Cypress Community on Discord¹).

• Please do not derail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.

Bug reports

A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful - thank you!

Guidelines for bug reports:

1. Read the FAQ — even if you think you have found a bug.

2. Use the GitHub issue search — check if the issue has already been reported.

3. ‼️Isolate the problem‼️ — create a reduced test case.

4. Don't exclusively post screenshots — screenshots are only allowed when accompanied by text, to ensure all issues are searchable.

5. Format blocks of code — use markdown to properly format blocks of code for maximum readability.

6. Attach debug information — enable debug output by running Cypress with the following environment variable.

   $ DEBUG=cypress:electron,cypress-configuration,cypress-cucumber-preprocessor cypress run
   

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Please try to be as detailed as possible in your report. What is your environment? What steps will reproduce the issue? What browser(s) and OS experience the problem? What would you expect to be the outcome? All these details will help people to fix any potential bugs.

Feature requests

Feature requests are welcome. But take a moment to find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. It's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's developers of the merits of this feature. Please provide as much detail and context as possible.

Pull requests

Good pull requests - patches, improvements, new features - are a fantastic help. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits.

Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (e.g. implementing features, refactoring code, porting to a different language), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the project's developers might not want to merge into the project.

Please adhere to the coding conventions used throughout a project (indentation, accurate comments, etc.) and any other requirements (such as test coverage).

Follow this process if you'd like your work considered for inclusion in the project:

1. Fork the project, clone your fork, and configure the remotes:

   # Clone your fork of the repo into the current directory
   git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/<repo-name>
   # Navigate to the newly cloned directory
   cd <repo-name>
   # Assign the original repo to a remote called "upstream"
   git remote add upstream https://github.com/badeball/cypress-cucumber-preprocessor

2. If you cloned a while ago, get the latest changes from upstream:

   git checkout master
   git pull upstream master

3. Create a new topic branch (off the main project development branch) to contain your feature, change, or fix:

   git checkout -b <topic-branch-name>

4. Commit your changes in logical chunks. Please adhere to these git commit message guidelines or your code is unlikely be merged into the main project. Use Git's interactive rebase feature to tidy up your commits before making them public.

5. Locally merge (or rebase) the upstream master branch into your topic branch:

   git pull [--rebase] upstream master

6. Push your topic branch up to your fork:

   git push origin <topic-branch-name>

7. Open a Pull Request with a clear title and description.

IMPORTANT: By submitting a patch, you agree to allow the project owner to license your work under the same license as that used by the project.

Reduced test case

Reduced test cases are the absolute, no doubt about it, number one way to troubleshoot bugs.

This is also commonly referred to as a «minimal, reproducible example». The concept is explained by Chris Coyier in Reduced Test Cases. SO also has an excellent article on the subject, How to create a Minimal, Reproducible Example. You may skip these and just read the following.

Some way of reproducing an issue is a prerequisite to fixing it. No one can fix issues blindly, that much should be obvious.

A reduced test case / minimal, reproducible example is something so minimal that it barely illustrates the issue at hand and nothing more. A minimal, reproducible example should ideally be the foundation for a test. It's something that should be comitted into the codebase to ensure that it never resurfaces again.

Almost everyone that creates a bug report here will be asked to provide this.

But don't panic, no one's after your company secrets. In fact, no one wants to look at your production code at all. A minimal, reproducible example should be completely void of anything resembling company secrets.

Any of the many examples can serve as a good starting point for creating a minimal, reproducible example. Take one, modify it and use it to illustrate what you think is wrong. Upload it to EG. Github and link to it from your bug report.

Another and perhaps more important reason for why you're asked to go through the exercise of reducing the problem, is to ensure that the real problem is actually what you describe it to be. You might be surprised how often I find this not to be the case.

Footnotes

1. The Discord server doesn't specifically pertain to community-maintained plugins, so your mileage may vary. ↩