sta/CONTRIBUTING.md

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# Contributing to STA

First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! ❤️

All types of contributions are encouraged and valued. See the [Table
of Contents](#table-of-contents) for different ways to help and
details about how this project handles them. Please make sure to read
the relevant section before making your contribution. It will make it
a lot easier for us maintainers and smooth out the experience for all
involved. The community looks forward to your contributions. 🎉

> And if you like the project, but just don't have time to contribute,
> that's fine. There are other easy ways to support the project and
> show your appreciation, which we would also be very happy about:
> - Star the project
> - Tweet about it
> - Refer this project in your project's readme
> - Mention the project at local meetups and tell your
>   friends/colleagues

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## Table of Contents

- [Contributors](#contributors)
- [AI Usage Policy](#ai-usage-policy)
- [Code of Conduct](#code-of-conduct)
- [I Have a Question](#i-have-a-question)
- [I Want To Contribute](#i-want-to-contribute)
  - [Reporting Bugs](#reporting-bugs)
  - [Suggesting Enhancements](#suggesting-enhancements)
  - [Your First Code Contribution](#your-first-code-contribution)
  - [Improving The Documentation](#improving-the-documentation)
- [New Pull Requests](#new-pull-requests)
  - [Commit Messages](#commit-messages)
  - [Creating the Pull Request](#creating-the-pull-request)

## Contributors

The project differentiates between 2 levels of contributors:

- Contributors: people who have contributed before (no special
  privileges)
- Maintainers: responsible for reviewing and merging PRs, after
  approval from the code owners

## AI Usage Policy

> [!IMPORTANT]
> This project does **not** accept pull requests that are fully or
> predominantly AI-generated. AI tools may be utilized solely in an
> assistive capacity.
>
> Detailed information regarding permissible and restricted uses of AI
> can be found in the [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) file.

Code that is initially generated by AI and subsequently edited will
still be considered AI-generated. AI assistance is permissible only
when the majority of the code is authored by a human contributor, with
AI employed exclusively for corrections or to expand on verbose
modifications that the contributor has already conceptualized (e.g.,
generating repeated lines with minor variations).

If AI is used to generate any portion of the code, contributors must
adhere to the following requirements:

1. Explicitly disclose the manner in which AI was employed.
2. Perform a comprehensive manual review prior to submitting the pull
   request.
3. Be prepared to explain every line of code they submitted when asked
   about it by a maintainer.
4. It is strictly prohibited to use AI to write your posts for you
   (bug reports, feature requests, pull request descriptions,
   responding to humans, ...).

For more info, please refer to the [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) file.

## Code of Conduct

This project and everyone participating in it is governed by the [Code
of Conduct](/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). By participating, you are expected to
uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to <phundrak>.


## I Have a Question

> If you want to ask a question, we assume that you have read the
> available [Documentation](/phundrak/STA/wiki).

Before you ask a question, it is best to search for existing
[Issues](/phundrak/STA/issues) that might help you. In case you have
found a suitable issue and still need clarification, you can write
your question in this issue. It is also advisable to search the
internet for answers first.

If you then still feel the need to ask a question and need
clarification, we recommend the following:

- Open an [Issue](/phundrak/STA/issues/new)
- Provide as much context as you can about what you're running into.
- Provide project and platform versions (cargo, rustc, etc), depending
  on what seems relevant.

We will then take care of the issue as soon as possible.

## I Want To Contribute

> ### Legal Notice <!-- omit in toc -->
>
> When contributing to this project, you must agree that you have
> authored 100% of the content, that you have the necessary rights to
> the content and that the content you contribute may be provided
> under the [project license](/LICENSE.md).

### Reporting Bugs

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#### Before Submitting a Bug Report

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for
more information. Therefore, we ask you to investigate carefully,
collect information and describe the issue in detail in your report.
Please complete the following steps in advance to help us fix any
potential bug as fast as possible.

- Make sure that you are using the latest version.
- Determine if your bug is really a bug and not an error on your side
  e.g. using incompatible environment components/versions (Make sure
  that you have read the [documentation](/phundrak/STA/wiki). If you
  are looking for support, you might want to check [this
  section](#i-have-a-question)).
- To see if other users have experienced (and potentially already
  solved) the same issue you are having, check if there is not already
  a bug report existing for your bug or error in the [bug
  tracker](/phundrak/STA/issues?q=label%3Abug).
- Also make sure to search the internet (including Stack Overflow) to
  see if users outside of the PhundrakLabs community have discussed
  the issue.
- Collect information about the bug:
  - Stack trace (Traceback)
  - OS, Platform and Version (Windows, Linux, macOS, x86, ARM)
  - Version of the interpreter, compiler, SDK, runtime environment,
    package manager, depending on what seems relevant.
  - Possibly your input and the output
  - Can you reliably reproduce the issue? And can you also reproduce
    it with older versions?

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#### How Do I Submit a Good Bug Report?

> You must never report security related issues, vulnerabilities or
> bugs including sensitive information to the issue tracker, or
> elsewhere in public. Instead sensitive bugs must be sent by email to
> <phundrak>.

We use PhundrakLabs issues to track bugs and errors. If you run into
an issue with the project:

- Open an [issue](/phundrak/STA/issues/new) (Since we can't be sure at
  this point whether it is a bug or not, we ask you not to talk about
  a bug yet and not to label the issue.)
- Explain the behavior you would expect and the actual behavior.
- Please provide as much context as possible and describe the
  *reproduction steps* that someone else can follow to recreate the
  issue on their own. This usually includes your code. For good bug
  reports you should isolate the problem and create a reduced test
  case.
- Provide the information you collected in the previous section.

Once it's filed:

- The project team will label the issue accordingly.
- A team member will try to reproduce the issue with your provided
  steps. If there are no reproduction steps or no obvious way to
  reproduce the issue, the team will ask you for those steps and mark
  the issue as `Status/Need More Info`. Bugs with the `Status/Need
  More Info` tag will not be addressed until they are reproduced.
- If the team is able to reproduce the issue, it will be marked
  `Reviewed/Confirmed`, as well as possibly other tags (such as
  `Priority/Medium`), and the issue will be left to be [implemented by
  someone](#your-first-code-contribution).

### Suggesting Enhancements

This section guides you through submitting an enhancement suggestion
for STA **including completely new features and minor improvements to
existing functionality**. Following these guidelines will help
maintainers and the community to understand your suggestion and find
related suggestions.

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#### Before Submitting an Enhancement

- Make sure that you are using the latest version.
- Read the [documentation](/phundrak/STA/wiki) carefully and find out
  if the functionality is already covered, maybe by an individual
  configuration.
- Perform a [search](/phundrak/STA/issues) 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.
- 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. Keep in mind
  that we want features that will be useful to the majority of our
  users and not just a small subset. If you're just targeting a
  minority of users, consider writing an add-on/plugin library.

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#### How Do I Submit a Good Enhancement Suggestion?

Enhancement suggestions are tracked as [Gitea
issues](/phundrak/STA/issues).

- 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.
- **Describe the current behavior** and **explain which behavior you
  expected to see instead** and why. At this point you can also tell
  which alternatives do not work for you.
- **Explain why this enhancement would be useful** to most
  STA users. You may also want to point out the other
  projects that solved it better and which could serve as inspiration.

### Your First Code Contribution
#### Setting Up Your Development Environment
Code contributions are most welcome! To contribute to the project, you
will need to read the README and install the
[prerequisites](/phundrak/STA#prerequisites).

You can use the IDE of your choice, popular options for Rust projects
are [VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com/) or
[RustRover](https://www.jetbrains.com/rust/), but plenty of other code
editors are available such as:
- Emacs (we recommend [rustic](https://github.com/rustic-rs/rustic)
  over plain [rust-mode](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-mode))
- [Vim/NeoVim](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust.vim)
- [Sublime Text](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-enhanced)
- [Helix](https://rust-analyzer.github.io/manual.html#helix)
- [Visual Studio](https://rust-analyzer.github.io/manual.html#visual-studio-2022)
- [Eclipse](https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/tools.corrosion)
- And plenty other text editors!

Depending on your choice, you may need to install an LSP server and an
LSP client on your text editor, such as with Emacs and Vim/NeoVim.

#### Where Should You Start?
If you want to participate to STA but you’re not sure what to do, take
a look at the [opened issues](/phundrak/STA/issues). You may find
issues with the `help wanted` tag where you could weigh in for the
resolution of the issue or for decision-making. You may also find
issues tagged as `good first issue` which should be relatively
approachable for first time contributors.

#### Writing Your First Code Contribution
Take your time when reading the code. The existing documentation can
help you better understand how the project is built and how the code
behaves. If you still have some questions, don’t hesitate to reach out
to maintainers.

When you start writing your code, only modify what needs to be
modified. Each contribution should do one thing and one thing only. Do
not, for instance, refactor some code that is unrelated to the main
topic of your contribution.

Check often the output of clippy by running `just lint`, and check if
existing tests still pass with `just test`. This project follows
Test-Driven Development (TDD), see [the TDD
section](#test-driven-development).

Check also that your code is properly formatted with
`just format-check`. You can format it automatically with
`just format`.

Finally, check the code coverage of STA. Ideally, try to stay within
the initial percentage of code coverage of the project, and try to
stay above 75% of code coverage. If it drops below 60%, your
contribution will be rejected automatically until you add more test
covering more code.

For writing tests, don’t hesitate to take a look at existing tests.
You can also read on how to write tests with SQLx [in their
documentation](https://docs.rs/sqlx/latest/sqlx/attr.test.html), as
well as some examples of poem tests in the [documentation of its
`test` module](https://docs.rs/poem/latest/poem/test/index.html).

#### Test-Driven Development

This project follows strict Test-Driven Development (TDD) as defined
in the [project constitution](/specs/constitution.md) in *Principle
III*. TDD is **mandatory** for all code contributions, with few
exceptions with maintainers’ approval.

**The TDD Cycle**:
1. **Red**: Write failing tests that describe the intended behaviour;
2. **Green**: Implement the minimal code to pass these tests;
3. **Refactor**: Improve the code while keeping tests green.

**Test Type Required:**
- **Unit tests** for domain logic (fast, isolated)
- **Integration tests** for infrastructure adapters
- **Contract tests** for API endpoints

**Before Implementation:**
- Your tests must compile and fail for the right reasons
- Maintainers may review your test scenarios before you proceed with
  implementation to ensure they capture the intended behaviour.

Do not write implementation code before you have failing tests that
validate the expected behaviour. Pull requests with untested code or
tests written after implementation will require revision.

### Improving the Documentation

To improve the documentation of STA you have two choices:
- Improve the [wiki](/phundrak/sta/wiki) of the project with
  high-level, functional documentation
- Improve the code documentation by adding some
  [rustdoc](https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustdoc/how-to-write-documentation.html)
  within the code. You can also take the opportunity to add new tests
  through code examples in the rustdoc; who knows, maybe you will
  discover a bug writing these tests, which will help improve the code
  itself!

## New Pull Requests
### Commit Messages

When creating a new commit, try to follow as closely as possible the
[Conventional Commits 1.0.0](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/)
standard. Each line should not exceed 72 characters in length. Commits
shall also be written in the present tense. Use the imperative mood as
much as possible when explaining what this commit does.

> Instead of *Fixed #42* or *Fixes #42*, write *Fix #42*

**DO NOT** increase the project version yourself. This will be up for
the maintainers to do so.

### Creating the Pull Request
Submit your pull requests to the `develop` branch. Pull requests to
other branches will be refused, unless there is a very specific reason
to do so explained in the pull request.

Note: *PR* means *Pull Request*.

**All PRs** must:
- Branch from `develop`
- Target the `develop` branch, unless specific cases. Maintainers are
  the only contributors that can create a PR targeting `main`
- Live on their own branch, prefixed by `feature/` or `fix/` (other
  prefixes can be accepted in specific cases) with the name of the
  feature or the issue fixed in `kebab-case`
- Be rebased on `develop` if the PR is no longer up to date
- Pass the CI pipeline (a failed CI pipeline will prevent any merge)

PRs coming from a `main`, `master`, `develop`, `release/`, `hotfix/`,
or `support/` branch will be rejected. PRs not up to date with
`develop` will not be merged.

**Simple PRs** shall:
- Have only one topic
- Have only one commit
- Have all their commits squashed into one if it contains several
  commits

If you open a PR whose scope are multiple topics, it will be rejected.
Open as many PRs as necessary, one for each topic.

**Complex PRs** shall:
- squash uninteresting commits (fixes to earlier commits, typos,
  syntax, etc…) together
- keep the major steps into individual commits

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## Attribution
This guide is based on
[**contributing-gen**](https://github.com/bttger/contributing-gen).
The Pull Request part is heavily based on the corresponding part of
Spacemacs’
[CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.org#pull-request).
The AI usage policy is heavily based on llama.cpp’s
[CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)