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How to contribute to OpenMW
Not sure what to do with all your free time? Pick out a task from here:
https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/issues
Currently, we are focused on completing the MW game experience and general polishing. Features out of this scope may be approved in some cases, but you should probably start a discussion first.
Note:
- Issues that have the 'Future' label are usually out of the current scope of the project. Corresponding submissions are unlikely to be merged or even properly reviewed.
- Newly reported bugs should be attempted to be reproduced on the latest code and on the latest available stable release. Both can be found here.
- Often, it's best to start a discussion about possible solutions before you jump into coding, especially for larger features.
Aside from coding, you can also help by triaging the issues list. Check for unconfirmed bugs and try to reproduce them on your end, working out any details that may be necessary. Check for bugs that do not conform to Bug Reporting Guidelines and improve them to do so!
There are various Tools to facilitate testing/development.
Merge request guidelines
To facilitate the review process, your merge request description should include the following, if applicable:
- A link back to the bug report or discussion that prompted the change.
- Summary of the changes made.
- Reasoning / motivation behind the change.
- What testing you have carried out to verify the change.
Furthermore, we advise to:
- Avoid stuffing unrelated commits into one merge request. As a rule of thumb, each feature and each bugfix should go into a separate MR, unless they are closely related or dependent upon each other. Small merge requests are easier to review and are less likely to require further changes before we can merge them. A "mega" merge request with lots of unrelated commits in it is likely to get held up in review for a long time.
- Feel free to submit incomplete merge requests. Even if the work cannot be merged yet, merge requests are a great place to collect early feedback. Just make sure to mark it as draft.
- If you plan on contributing often, please read the Developer Reference on our wiki, especially the Policies and Standards.
- Make sure each of your changes has a clear objective. Unnecessary changes may lead to merge conflicts, clutter the commit history and slow down review. Code formatting 'fixes' should be avoided, unless you were already changing that particular line anyway.
- Reference the bug / feature ticket(s) in your commit message or merge request description (e.g. 'Bug #123') to make it easier to keep track of what we changed for what reason. Our bugtracker will show those commits next to the ticket. If your merge request's description includes 'Fixes #123', that issue will automatically be closed when your commit is merged.
- When pulling changes from master, prefer rebase over merge. Consider using a merge if there are conflicts or for long-running MRs.
Guidelines for original engine "fixes"
From time to time, you may be tempted to "fix" what you think was a "bug" in the original game engine.
Unfortunately, the definition of what is a "bug" is not so clear. Consider that your "bug" is actually a feature unless proven otherwise:
- We have no way of knowing what the original developers really intended (short of asking them, good luck with that).
- What may seem like an illogical mechanic can actually be part of an attempt to balance the game.
- Many people will actually like these "bugs" because that is what they remember the game for.
- Exploits may be part of the fun of an open-world game - they reward knowledge with power. There are too many of them to plug them all, anyway.
OpenMW, in its default configuration, is meant to be a faithful reimplementation of Morrowind, minus things like crash bugs, stability issues and severe design errors. However, we try to avoid touching anything that affects the core gameplay, the balancing of the game or introduces incompatibilities with existing mod content.
That said, we may sometimes evaluate such issues on an individual basis. Common exceptions to the above would be:
- Issues so glaring that they would severely limit the capabilities of the engine in the future (for example, the scripting engine not being allowed to access objects in remote cells).
- Bugs where the intent is very obvious, and that have little to no balancing impact (e.g. the bug where being tired made it easier to repair items, instead of harder).
- Bugs that were fixed in an official patch for Morrowind.
Feature additions policy
We get it: you have waited so long for feature XYZ to be available in Morrowind, and now that OpenMW is here, you cannot wait to implement your ingenious idea and share it with the world.
Unfortunately, since maintaining features comes at a cost and our resources are limited, we have to be a little selective in what features we allow into the main repository. Generally:
- Features should be as generic and non-redundant as possible.
- Any feature that is also possible with modding should be done as a mod instead.
- Through moving certain game logic into built-in scripting, OpenMW will expand the scope of what is possible with modding.
- Modders can edit OpenMW's GUI skins and layout XML files as well as create new widgets through the Lua API, but it is expected that existing C++ widgets will also be recreated through built-in scripting.
- If a feature introduces new game UI strings, you will need to become acquainted with OpenMW's YAML localisation system and expose them. Read about it here.
If you are in doubt of your feature being within our scope, it is probably best to start a forum discussion first. See the settings documentation and Features list for some examples of features that were deemed acceptable.
Reviewing merge requests
We welcome any help in reviewing open MRs. You don't need to be a developer to comment on new features. We also encourage "junior" developers to review senior's work.
This review process is divided into two sections because complaining about code or style issues hardly makes sense until the functionality of the MR is deemed OK. Anyone can help with the functionality review while most parts of the code review require you to have programming experience.
In addition to the checklist below, make sure to check that the merge request guidelines (first half of this document) were followed.
Functionality review
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Ask for missing information or clarifications. Compare against the project's design goals and roadmap.
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Check if the automated tests are passing. If they are not, make the MR author aware of the issue and potentially quote the error line. If the error appears unrelated to the MR and/or the master branch is failing with the same error, our CI might be broken and needs to be fixed independently of any open MRs. Raise this issue on one of the following resources:
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Make sure that the new code has been tested thoroughly, either by asking the author or, preferably, testing yourself. In a complex project like OpenMW, it is easy to make mistakes, typos, etc. Therefore, prefer testing all code changes, no matter how trivial they look. When you have tested a MR that no one has tested so far, post a comment letting us know.
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On long-running MRs, request the author to update its description with the current state or a checklist of things left to do.
Code review
- Carefully review each line for issues the author may not have thought of, paying special attention to 'special' cases. Often, people build their code with a particular mindset and forget about other configurations or unexpected interactions.
- If any changes are workarounds for an issue in an upstream library, make sure the issue was reported upstream so we can eventually drop the workaround when the issue is fixed and the new version of that library is a build dependency.
- Make sure MRs do not turn into arguments about hardly related issues. If the MR author disagrees with an established part of the project (e.g. supported build environments), they should open a forum discussion or bug report and in the meantime adjust the MR to adhere to the established way, rather than leaving the MR hanging on a dispute.
- Check if the code matches our style guidelines.
- Check to make sure the commit history is clean. Squashing should be considered if the review process has made the commit history particularly long. Commits that don't build should be avoided because they are a nuisance for
git bisect.
Merging
To be able to merge MRs, commit privileges are required. If you do not have the privileges, just ping someone that does have them with a short comment like "Looks good to me @user".
In general case, you should not merge MRs prematurely even if you are sure they just work or if they receive a senior member's approval. The rule of thumb is to give at least 24 hours to a couple days of a window for reviews to come through. For more technically involved MRs, 24 hours might not be enough.
Dealing with regressions
The master branch should always be in a working state that is not worse than the previous release in any way. If a regression is found, the first and foremost priority should be to get the regression fixed quickly, either by reverting the change that caused it or finding a better solution. Please avoid leaving the project in the 'broken' state for an extensive period of time while proper solutions are found. If the solution takes more than a day or so then it is usually better to revert the offending change first and reapply it later when fixed.