Contributions to Node.js may come in many forms. Some contribute code changes, others contribute docs, others help answer questions from users, help keep the infrastructure running, or seek out ways of advocating for Node.js users of all types.
The Node.js project welcomes all contributions from anyone willing to work in good faith both with other contributors and with the community. No contribution is too small and all contributions are valued.
This guide details the basic steps for getting started contributing to the
Node.js project's core nodejs/node GitHub Repository and describes what to
expect throughout each step of the process.
- Code of Conduct
- Issues
- Pull Requests
- Additional Notes
- Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
The Node.js project has a Code of Conduct that all contributors are expected to follow. This code describes the minimum behavior expectations for all contributors.
As a contributor to Node.js, how you choose to act and interact towards your fellow contributors, as well as to the community, will reflect back not only on yourself but on the project as a whole. The Code of Conduct is designed and intended, above all else, to help establish a culture within the project that allows anyone and everyone who wants to contribute to feel safe doing so.
Should any individual act in any way that is considered in violation of the Code of Conduct, corrective actions will be taken. It is possible, however, for any individual to act in such a manner that is not in violation of the strict letter of the Code of Conduct guidelines while still going completely against the spirit of what that Code is intended to accomplish.
Open, diverse and inclusive communities live and die on the basis of trust. Contributors can disagree with one another so long as they trust that those disagreements are in good faith and everyone is working towards a common goal.
All contributors to Node.js tacitly agree to abide by both the letter and spirit of the Code of Conduct. Failure, or unwillingness, to do so will result in contributions being respectfully declined.
A bad actor is someone who repeatedly violates the spirit of the Code of Conduct through consistent failure to self-regulate the way in which they interact with other contributors in the project. In doing so, bad actors alienate other contributors, discourage collaboration, and generally reflect poorly on the project as a whole.
Being a bad actor may be intentional or unintentional. Typically, unintentional bad behavior can be easily corrected by being quick to apologize and correct course even if you are not entirely convinced you need to. Giving other contributors the benefit of the doubt and having a sincere willingness to admit that you might be wrong is critical for any successful open collaboration.
Don't be a bad actor.
Issues in nodejs/node are the primary means by which bug reports and
general discussions are made. For any issue, there are fundamentally three
ways an individual can contribute:
- By opening the issue for discussion: For instance, if you believe that you
have uncovered a bug in Node.js, creating a new issue in the
nodejs/nodeissue tracker is the way to report it. - By helping to triage the issue: This can be done either by providing supporting details (a test case that demonstrates a bug), or providing suggestions on how to address the issue.
- By helping to resolve the issue: Typically this is done either in the form
of demonstrating that the issue reported is not a problem after all, or more
often, by opening a Pull Request that changes some bit of something in
nodejs/nodein a concrete and reviewable manner.
Because the level of activity in the nodejs/node repository is so high,
questions or requests for general help using Node.js should be directed at
the Node.js help repository.
Discussion of non-technical topics (such as intellectual property and trademark) should be directed to the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) repository.
When opening a new issue in the nodejs/node issue tracker, users will be
presented with a basic template that should be filled in.
<!--
Thank you for reporting an issue.
This issue tracker is for bugs and issues found within Node.js core.
If you require more general support please file an issue on our help
repo. https://github.com/nodejs/help
Please fill in as much of the template below as you're able.
Version: output of `node -v`
Platform: output of `uname -a` (UNIX), or version and 32 or 64-bit (Windows)
Subsystem: if known, please specify affected core module name
If possible, please provide code that demonstrates the problem, keeping it as
simple and free of external dependencies as you are able.
-->
* **Version**:
* **Platform**:
* **Subsystem**:
<!-- Enter your issue details below this comment. -->If you believe that you have uncovered a bug in Node.js, please fill out this form, following the template to the best of your ability. Do not worry if you cannot answer every detail, just fill in what you can.
The two most important pieces of information we need in order to properly evaluate the report is a description of the behavior you are seeing and a simple test case we can use to recreate the problem on our own. If we cannot recreate the issue, it becomes impossible for us to fix.
In order to rule out the possibility of bugs introduced by userland code, test cases should be limited, as much as possible, to using only Node.js APIs. If the bug occurs only when you're using a specific userland module, there is a very good chance that either (a) the module has a bug or (b) something in Node.js changed that broke the module.
Once an issue has been opened, it is not uncommon for there to be discussion around it. Some contributors may have differing opinions about the issue, including whether the behavior being seen is a bug or a feature. This discussion is part of the process and should be kept focused, helpful and professional.
Short, clipped responses—that provide neither additional context nor supporting detail—are not helpful or professional. To many, such responses are simply annoying and unfriendly.
Contributors are encouraged to help one another make forward progress as much as possible, empowering one another to solve issues collaboratively. If you choose to comment on an issue that you feel either is not a problem that needs to be fixed, or if you encounter information in an issue that you feel is incorrect, explain why you feel that way with additional supporting context, and be willing to be convinced that you may be wrong. By doing so, we can often reach the correct outcome much faster.
In the vast majority of cases, issues are resolved by opening a Pull Request. The process for opening and reviewing a Pull Request is similar to that of opening and triaging issues, but carries with it a necessary review and approval workflow that ensures that the proposed changes meet the minimal quality and functional guidelines of the Node.js project.
Pull Requests are the way in which concrete changes are made to the code,
documentation, dependencies, and tools contained with the nodejs/node
repository.
There are two fundamental components of the Pull Request process: one concrete and technical, and one more process oriented. The concrete and technical component involves the specific details of setting up your local environment so that you can make the actual changes. This is where we will start.
Node.js has several bundled dependencies in the deps/ and the tools/ directories that are not part of the project proper. Changes to files in those directories should be sent to their respective projects. Do not send a patch to Node.js. We cannot accept such patches.
In case of doubt, open an issue in the issue tracker or contact one of the project Collaborators. Node.js has two IRC channels: #Node.js for general help and questions, and #Node-dev for development of Node.js core specifically.
To get started, you will need to have git installed locally. Depending on
your operating system, there are also a number of other dependencies required.
These are detailed in the Building guide.
Once you have git and are sure you have all of the necessary dependencies,
it's time to create a fork.
Before getting started, it is recommended to configure git so that it knows
who you are:
$ git config --global user.name "J. Random User"
$ git config --global user.email "j.random.user@example.com"
Fork the project on GitHub and clone your fork locally.
$ git clone git@github.com:username/node.git
$ cd node
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/nodejs/node.git
$ git fetch upstream
As a best practice to keep your development environment as organized as
possible, create local branches to work within. These should also be created
directly off of the master branch.
$ git checkout -b my-branch -t upstream/master
The vast majority of Pull Requests opened against the nodejs/node
repository includes changes to either the C/C++ code contained in the src
directory, the JavaScript code contained in the lib directory, the
documentation in docs/api or tests within the test directory.
If you are modifying code, please be sure to run make lint from time to
time to ensure that the changes follow the Node.js code style guide.
Any documentation you write (including code comments and API documentation)
should follow the Style Guide. Code samples included
in the API docs will also be checked when running make lint (or
vcbuild.bat lint on Windows).
It is a recommended best practice to keep your changes as logically grouped as possible within individual commits. There is no limit to the number of commits any single Pull Request may have, and many contributors find it easier to review changes that are split across multiple commits.
$ git add my/changed/files
$ git commit
Note that multiple commits often get squashed when they are landed (see the notes about commit squashing).
A good commit message should describe what changed and why.
-
The first line should:
- contain a short description of the change
- be 50 characters or less
- be entirely in lowercase with the exception of proper nouns, acronyms, and the words that refer to code, like function/variable names
- be prefixed with the name of the changed subsystem and start with an
imperative verb. Check the output of
git log --oneline files/you/changedto find out what subsystems your changes touch.
Examples:
net: add localAddress and localPort to Socketsrc: fix typos in node_lttng_provider.h
-
Keep the second line blank.
-
Wrap all other lines at 72 columns.
-
If your patch fixes an open issue, you can add a reference to it at the end of the log. Use the
Fixes:prefix and the full issue URL. For other references useRefs:.Examples:
Fixes: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/1337Refs: http://eslint.org/docs/rules/space-in-parens.htmlRefs: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/3615
Sample complete commit message:
subsystem: explain the commit in one line
Body of commit message is a few lines of text, explaining things
in more detail, possibly giving some background about the issue
being fixed, etc.
The body of the commit message can be several paragraphs, and
please do proper word-wrap and keep columns shorter than about
72 characters or so. That way, `git log` will show things
nicely even when it is indented.
Fixes: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/1337
Refs: http://eslint.org/docs/rules/space-in-parens.htmlIf you are new to contributing to Node.js, please try to do your best at conforming to these guidelines, but do not worry if you get something wrong. One of the existing contributors will help get things situated and the contributor landing the Pull Request will ensure that everything follows the project guidelines.
As a best practice, once you have committed your changes, it is a good idea
to use git rebase (not git merge) to synchronize your work with the main
repository.
$ git fetch upstream
$ git rebase upstream/master
This ensures that your working branch has the latest changes from nodejs/node
master.
Bug fixes and features should always come with tests. A guide for writing tests in Node.js has been provided to make the process easier. Looking at other tests to see how they should be structured can also help.
The test directory within the nodejs/node repository is complex and it is
often not clear where a new test file should go. When in doubt, add new tests
to the test/parallel/ directory and the right location will be sorted out
later.
Before submitting your changes in a Pull Request, always run the full Node.js test suite. To run the tests (including code linting) on Unix / macOS:
$ ./configure && make -j4 test
And on Windows:
> vcbuild test
(See the BUILDING.md for more details.)
Make sure the linter does not report any issues and that all tests pass. Please do not submit patches that fail either check.
If you want to run the linter without running tests, use
make lint/vcbuild lint. It will run both JavaScript linting and
C++ linting.
If you are updating tests and just want to run a single test to check it:
$ python tools/test.py -J --mode=release parallel/test-stream2-transform
You can execute the entire suite of tests for a given subsystem by providing the name of a subsystem:
$ python tools/test.py -J --mode=release child-process
If you want to check the other options, please refer to the help by using
the --help option
$ python tools/test.py --help
You can usually run tests directly with node:
$ ./node ./test/parallel/test-stream2-transform.js
Remember to recompile with make -j4 in between test runs if you change code in
the lib or src directories.
It's good practice to ensure any code you add or change is covered by tests. You can do so by running the test suite with coverage enabled:
$ ./configure --coverage && make coverage
A detailed coverage report will be written to coverage/index.html for
JavaScript coverage and to coverage/cxxcoverage.html for C++ coverage.
Note that generating a test coverage report can take several minutes.
To collect coverage for a subset of tests you can set the CI_JS_SUITES and
CI_NATIVE_SUITES variables:
$ CI_JS_SUITES=child-process CI_NATIVE_SUITES= make coverage
The above command executes tests for the child-process subsystem and
outputs the resulting coverage report.
Running tests with coverage will create and modify several directories and files. To clean up afterwards, run:
make coverage-clean
./configure && make -j4.
Once you are sure your commits are ready to go, with passing tests and linting, begin the process of opening a Pull Request by pushing your working branch to your fork on GitHub.
$ git push origin my-branch
From within GitHub, opening a new Pull Request will present you with a template that should be filled out:
<!--
Thank you for your Pull Request. Please provide a description above and review
the requirements below.
Bug fixes and new features should include tests and possibly benchmarks.
Contributors guide: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
-->
##### Checklist
<!-- Remove items that do not apply. For completed items, change [ ] to [x]. -->
- [ ] `make -j4 test` (UNIX), or `vcbuild test` (Windows) passes
- [ ] tests and/or benchmarks are included
- [ ] documentation is changed or added
- [ ] commit message follows [commit guidelines](https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#commit-message-guidelines)
##### Affected core subsystem(s)
<!-- Provide affected core subsystem(s) (like doc, cluster, crypto, etc). -->Please try to do your best at filling out the details, but feel free to skip parts if you're not sure what to put.
Once opened, Pull Requests are usually reviewed within a few days.
You will probably get feedback or requests for changes to your Pull Request. This is a big part of the submission process so don't be discouraged! Some contributors may sign off on the Pull Request right away, others may have more detailed comments or feedback. This is a necessary part of the process in order to evaluate whether the changes are correct and necessary.
To make changes to an existing Pull Request, make the changes to your local branch, add a new commit with those changes, and push those to your fork. GitHub will automatically update the Pull Request.
$ git add my/changed/files
$ git commit
$ git push origin my-branch
It is also frequently necessary to synchronize your Pull Request with other
changes that have landed in master by using git rebase:
$ git fetch --all
$ git rebase origin/master
$ git push --force-with-lease origin my-branch
Important: The git push --force-with-lease command is one of the few ways
to delete history in git. Before you use it, make sure you understand the
risks. If in doubt, you can always ask for guidance in the Pull Request or on
IRC in the #node-dev channel.
If you happen to make a mistake in any of your commits, do not worry. You can amend the last commit (for example if you want to change the commit log).
$ git add any/changed/files
$ git commit --amend
$ git push --force-with-lease origin my-branch
There are a number of more advanced mechanisms for managing commits using
git rebase that can be used, but are beyond the scope of this guide.
Feel free to post a comment in the Pull Request to ping reviewers if you are awaiting an answer on something. If you encounter words or acronyms that seem unfamiliar, refer to this glossary.
All Pull Requests require "sign off" in order to land. Whenever a contributor reviews a Pull Request they may find specific details that they would like to see changed or fixed. These may be as simple as fixing a typo, or may involve substantive changes to the code you have written. In general, such requests are intended to be helpful, but at times may come across as abrupt or unhelpful, especially requests to change things that do not include concrete suggestions on how to change them.
Try not to be discouraged. If you feel that a particular review is unfair, say so, or contact one of the other contributors in the project and seek their input. Often such comments are the result of the reviewer having only taken a short amount of time to review and are not ill-intended. Such issues can often be resolved with a bit of patience. That said, reviewers should be expected to be helpful in their feedback, and feedback that is simply vague, dismissive and unhelpful is likely safe to ignore.
In order to land, a Pull Request needs to be reviewed and approved by at least one Node.js Collaborator and pass a CI (Continuous Integration) test run. After that, as long as there are no objections from other contributors, the Pull Request can be merged. If you find your Pull Request waiting longer than you expect, see the notes about the waiting time.
When a collaborator lands your Pull Request, they will post
a comment to the Pull Request page mentioning the commit(s) it
landed as. GitHub often shows the Pull Request as Closed at this
point, but don't worry. If you look at the branch you raised your
Pull Request against (probably master), you should see a commit with
your name on it. Congratulations and thanks for your contribution!
All Node.js contributors who choose to review and provide feedback on Pull Requests have a responsibility to both the project and the individual making the contribution. Reviews and feedback must be helpful, insightful, and geared towards improving the contribution as opposed to simply blocking it or stopping it. If there are reasons why you feel the PR should not land, explain what those are. Do not expect to be able to block a Pull Request from advancing simply because you say "No" without giving an explanation. It is also important to be open to having your mind changed, and to being open to working with the contributor to make the Pull Request better.
Reviews that are dismissive or disrespectful of the contributor or any other reviewers are strictly counter to the Code of Conduct.
When reviewing a Pull Request, the primary goals are for the codebase to improve and for the person submitting the request to succeed. Even if a Pull Request does not land, the submitters should come away from the experience feeling like their effort was not wasted or unappreciated. Every Pull Request from a new contributor is an opportunity to grow the community.
Do not overwhelm new contributors.
It is tempting to micro-optimize and make everything about relative performance, perfect grammar, or exact style matches. Do not succumb to that temptation.
Focus first on the most significant aspects of the change:
- Does this change make sense for Node.js?
- Does this change make Node.js better, even if only incrementally?
- Are there clear bugs or larger scale issues that need attending to?
When changes are necessary, request them, do not demand them, and do not assume that the submitter already knows how to add a test or run a benchmark.
Specific performance optimization techniques, coding styles and conventions change over time. The first impression you give to a new contributor never does.
Nits (requests for small changes that are not essential) are fine, but try to avoid stalling the Pull Request. Most nits can typically be fixed by the Node.js Collaborator landing the Pull Request but they can also be an opportunity for the contributor to learn a bit more about the project.
It is always good to clearly indicate nits when you comment: e.g.
Nit: change foo() to bar(). But this is not blocking.
Be aware that how you communicate requests and reviews in your feedback can have a significant impact on the success of the Pull Request. Yes, we may land a particular change that makes Node.js better, but the individual might just not want to have anything to do with Node.js ever again. The goal is not just having good code.
There is a minimum waiting time which we try to respect for non-trivial changes, so that people who may have important input in such a distributed project are able to respond.
For non-trivial changes, Pull Requests must be left open for at least 48 hours during the week, and 72 hours on a weekend. In most cases, when the PR is relatively small and focused on a narrow set of changes, these periods provide more than enough time to adequately review. Sometimes changes take far longer to review, or need more specialized review from subject matter experts. When in doubt, do not rush.
Trivial changes, typically limited to small formatting changes or fixes to documentation, may be landed within the minimum 48 hour window.
If a Pull Request appears to be abandoned or stalled, it is polite to first
check with the contributor to see if they intend to continue the work before
checking if they would mind if you took it over (especially if it just has
nits left). When doing so, it is courteous to give the original contributor
credit for the work they started (either by preserving their name and email
address in the commit log, or by using an Author: meta-data tag in the
commit.
Any Node.js core Collaborator (any GitHub user with commit rights in the
nodejs/node repository) is authorized to approve any other contributor's
work. Collaborators are not permitted to approve their own Pull Requests.
Collaborators indicate that they have reviewed and approve of the changes in
a Pull Request either by using GitHub's Approval Workflow, which is preferred,
or by leaving an LGTM ("Looks Good To Me") comment.
When explicitly using the "Changes requested" component of the GitHub Approval Workflow, show empathy. That is, do not be rude or abrupt with your feedback and offer concrete suggestions for improvement, if possible. If you're not sure how a particular change can be improved, say so.
Most importantly, after leaving such requests, it is courteous to make yourself available later to check whether your comments have been addressed.
If you see that requested changes have been made, you can clear another
collaborator's Changes requested review.
Change requests that are vague, dismissive, or unconstructive may also be dismissed if requests for greater clarification go unanswered within a reasonable period of time.
If you do not believe that the Pull Request should land at all, use
Changes requested to indicate that you are considering some of your comments
to block the PR from landing. When doing so, explain why you believe the
Pull Request should not land along with an explanation of what may be an
acceptable alternative course, if any.
Opinions on this vary, even among the members of the Technical Steering Committee.
One general rule of thumb is that if Node.js itself needs it (due to historic
or functional reasons), then it belongs in Node.js. For instance, url
parsing is in Node.js because of HTTP protocol support.
Also, functionality that either cannot be implemented outside of core in any reasonable way, or only with significant pain.
It is not uncommon for contributors to suggest new features they feel would make Node.js better. These may or may not make sense to add, but as with all changes, be courteous in how you communicate your stance on these. Comments that make the contributor feel like they should have "known better" or ridiculed for even trying run counter to the Code of Conduct.
Node.js has always optimized for speed of execution. If a particular change can be shown to make some part of Node.js faster, it's quite likely to be accepted. Claims that a particular Pull Request will make things faster will almost always be met by requests for performance benchmark results that demonstrate the improvement.
That said, performance is not the only factor to consider. Node.js also optimizes in favor of not breaking existing code in the ecosystem, and not changing working functional code just for the sake of changing.
If a particular Pull Request introduces a performance or functional regression, rather than simply rejecting the Pull Request, take the time to work with the contributor on improving the change. Offer feedback and advice on what would make the Pull Request acceptable, and do not assume that the contributor should already know how to do that. Be explicit in your feedback.
All Pull Requests that contain changes to code must be run through continuous integration (CI) testing at https://ci.nodejs.org/.
Only Node.js core Collaborators with commit rights to the nodejs/node
repository may start a CI testing run. The specific details of how to do
this are included in the new Collaborator Onboarding guide.
Ideally, the code change will pass ("be green") on all platform configurations supported by Node.js (there are over 30 platform configurations currently). This means that all tests pass and there are no linting errors. In reality, however, it is not uncommon for the CI infrastructure itself to fail on specific platforms or for so-called "flaky" tests to fail ("be red"). It is vital to visually inspect the results of all failed ("red") tests to determine whether the failure was caused by the changes in the Pull Request.
When the commits in your Pull Request land, they may be squashed into one commit per logical change. Metadata will be added to the commit message (including links to the Pull Request, links to relevant issues, and the names of the reviewers). The commit history of your Pull Request, however, will stay intact on the Pull Request page.
For the size of "one logical change", 0b5191f can be a good example. It touches the implementation, the documentation, and the tests, but is still one logical change. In general, the tests should always pass when each individual commit lands on the master branch.
A Pull Request is approved either by saying LGTM, which stands for "Looks Good To Me", or by using GitHub's Approve button. GitHub's Pull Request review feature can be used during the process. For more information, check out the video tutorial or the official documentation.
After you push new changes to your branch, you need to get approval for these new changes again, even if GitHub shows "Approved" because the reviewers have hit the buttons before.
Every Pull Request needs to be tested to make sure that it works on the platforms that Node.js supports. This is done by running the code through the CI system.
Only a Collaborator can start a CI run. Usually one of them will do it for you as approvals for the Pull Request come in. If not, you can ask a Collaborator to start a CI run.
A Pull Request needs to stay open for at least 48 hours (72 hours on a weekend) from when it is submitted, even after it gets approved and passes the CI. This is to make sure that everyone has a chance to weigh in. If the changes are trivial, collaborators may decide it doesn't need to wait. A Pull Request may well take longer to be merged in. All these precautions are important because Node.js is widely used, so don't be discouraged!
If you want to know more about the code review and the landing process, you can take a look at the collaborator's guide.
The following additional resources may be of assistance:
- How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example
- core-validate-commit - A utility that ensures commits follow the commit formatting guidelines.
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.