xmpp-rs/CONTRIBUTING.md

# Contributing guidelines

Thank you (again) for your interest in the project!

## Talk to us before committing to a change

We recommend you come and talk to us in the channel and/or open an issue
before you start working on a feature, to **see if it aligns with our goals**.

We'll do our best to review and discuss changes with you but we're also humans
with other activities, please be patient with us too.

## General guidelines

The library is still **in development**, and while this is the case we adopt a
**fail-fast** strategy, which is also a reason for the choice of the language.

The earlier we catch bugs and fix them, the less chances they have to confuse
users of our library, or make end-users give up on software developed using
this library. This also helps improving other software in the ecosystem.

We will not accept changes (code or otherwise) created with the aid of "AI"
tooling. "AI" models are trained at the expense of underpaid workers filtering
inputs of abhorrent content, and does not respect the owners of input content.
Ethically, it sucks.

Nor will we accept changes (code or otherwise) that move xmpp-rs crates toward
enterprise / surveillance / other toxic capitalist pursuits.

## Keep commits short and meaningful

To help with reviews, to facilitate reverts, reading and grepping through
commit history, bisects: it is important for us that changes come in small and
meaningful commits.

That is, **don't bundle all the things in a single commit**, if a change can
be added via different commits standalone and still make sense, then it's
probably a good candidate for splitting.

## Meta

Do not forget to **update changelogs** and other crate metadata where necessary.

Signing commits (`git commit -S`) and adding DCO bits (`git commit -s`) are
welcome but not mandatory.

## Ensure CI passes

Code changes should **include documentation**. They should also **include
tests** where appropriate, and pass the existing test suite.

CI should pass to submit your changes. This is done by ensuring `cargo
fmt` and `cargo test` pass (in the workspace). Please run `cargo fmt` as part
of each of your commits.

More thorough tests can be done locally with `act` or `forgejo-runner
exec`, which is also what is run in the CI. We require docker to be setup for
this to work.

# Making a release

We are using the [semver](https://semver.org/) versioning system.

For each crate you are releasing:
- Ensure there aren't urgent changes in the buffer waiting to be released too.
  Even though increasing a number is cheap, the process to get there isn't
  doing itself
- Have a run of cargo clippy if it hasn't been done (TODO: Add to CI)
- Ensure tests, docstrings and examples pass (TODO: Add `--all-features` to
  CI.)
- Ensure dependencies are up-to-date.
- Update the `version` attribute in the `Cargo.toml` file.
- Update the ChangeLog file with the version number, the release date etc.
- Rework the ChangeLog if necessary. Add missing entries, merge duplicates,
  unify wording, make sure everything is where it should be, add meta
  information such as merge requests, etc.
- Send all of this as a merge request.
- If the change is significant enough, prepare a blog article about it.

## For the person with commit access

- `git tag -s` releases
- `cargo publish`
- Publish blog article
- Promote on social media