How to contribute

We love pull requests and we want to make it as easy as possible to contribute changes.

Getting started

Make sure you have a GitHub account.
Maybe create a GitHub issue: is this a comment or documentation change? Does an issue already exist? If you need an issue then describe it in as much detail as you can, e.g. step-by-step to reproduce.
Fork the repository on GitHub.
Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/gchq/stroom.git
Create a feature branch for your change, branched off master or one of the release branches (6.1, 7.0, etc.) e.g. git checkout -b gh-12345-my-contribution master.

Run up Stroom and if it's a bug make sure you can re-produce it. See the documentation for more details on how to develop with Stroom.
Make your changes and test. Make sure you include new or updated tests if you need to.
Run a full build from the project root: ./gradlew clean build.

Sign the GCHQ Contributor Licence Agreement.
Push your changes to your fork.
Submit a pull request.
We'll look at it pretty soon after it's submitted, and we aim to respond within one week.

Here are some things you can do to make this all smoother:

If you think it might be controversial then discuss it with us beforehand, via a GitHub issue.
Add unit/integration tests.
Write a good commit message.
Update the CHANGELOG using log_change.sh, see https://github.com/at055612/release-it for details. See CHANGELOG.md for examples of change entries.
If it is a new feature or a change to the user experience then document the change at stroom-docs and raise a PR.