How to contribute to Org?

{Back to Worg's index}

Table of Contents

Types of contributions

Every contribution to Org is very welcome. Here is a list of areas where your contribution will be useful:

  • you can submit bug reports – Before sending a bug report, make sure you have read this section of Org's manual: Feedback You can also read this great text: "How to Send Bug Reports Effectively"
  • you can submit feature requests – Org is already mature, but new ideas keep popping up. If you want to request a feature, it might be a good idea to have a look at the current Issue tracking file which captures both bug reports and feature requests. Or dig into the mailing list for possible previous discussions about your idea. If you cannot find back your idea, formulate it as detailed as possible, if possible with examples, and send it to the mailing list.
  • you can submit patches – You can submit patches to the mailing list. See the Preferred way of submitting patches section for details.

    If your patch is against a file that is part of Emacs, then your total contribution (all patches you submit) should change less than 15 lines (See the etc/CONTRIBUTE file in GNU Emacs.) If you contribute more, you have to assign the copyright of your contribution to the Free Software Foundation (see below).

  • you can submit Org add-ons – there are many Org add-ons. The best way is to submit your code to the mailing list to discuss it with people. If it is useful, you might consider contributing it to the CONTRIB/ directory in the git repository.
  • you can submit material to the Worg website – This website is made of Org files that you can contribute to. Learn what Worg is about and how to contribute to it through git.

Copyright issues when contributing to Emacs org-mode

Org is made of many files. Most of them are also distributed as part of GNU Emacs. These files are called the Org core, and they are all copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. If you consider contributing to these files, your first need to grant the right to include your works in GNU Emacs to the FSF. For this you need to complete this form, send it to assign@gnu.org, and tell the Org-mode maintainer when this process is complete. Some people consider this a hassle. I don't want to discuss this in detail here - there are some good reasons for getting the copyright registered, an example is discussed in this FLOSS weekly podcast. Furthermore, by playing according to the Emacs rules, we gain the fantastic advantage that every version of Emacs ships with Org-mode already fully built in. So please consider doing this - it makes our work as maintainers so much easier, because we can then take your patches without any additional work.

If you want to learn more about why copyright assignments are collected, read this: Why the FSF gets copyright assignments from contributors?

For Org developers

  1. Send your public key to Jason Dunsmore.
  2. Wait for confirmation that your public key has been added to the server.
  3. Clone org-mode.git repository like this: 
    ~$ git clone orgmode@orgmode.org:org-mode.git
  4. Commit your changes and push them.

If you are undertaking big changes, please create a dedicated branch for them.

For Org contributors: preferred way of submitting patches

Coding conventions

Org is part of Emacs, so any contribution should follow the GNU Emacs Lisp coding conventions described in Emacs manual.

Sending patch with git

Org-mode is developed using git as the version control system. Git provides an amazing framework to collaborate on a project. Git can be used to make patches and send them via email – this is perfectly fine for minor changes.

Patches get caught on patchwork

As long as these patches are formatted properly, they will be automatically registered at John Wiegley's patchwork server and will then be accepted, rejected, or sent back to the author with a request for modification.

Patchwork assumes there is only one patch per email and will not catch more than one patch – so please send multiple patches in separate emails.

In this context, "formatted properly" means that the patches are included either plainly in the mail text, or as text attachments (mime-type text, subtypes "x-patch", "x-diff", or "plain"). In particular, binary types or, even worse, "application/octet-stream" (the asinine default of some mail programs) are not going to be recognized. Please find out how to convince your mail program to send proper attachments. Also, if you include the patch inline, please make sure that your mail program does not reformat it (although there are plenty of places further down the line where that can happen, unfortunately). If you attach the patch, then reformatting is not a problem.

Sending quick fixes

This command will make a patch between the staging area (in your computer), and the file you modified: 

git diff -p org-whatever.el > org-whatever.el.diff

If you already committed your changes to your index (staging area), then you should compare against a particular branch (in this example, origin/master): 

git diff -p origin/master org-whatever.el > org-whatever.el.diff

You email the output to the mailing list, adding [PATCH] to the subject, and description of what you fixed or changed.

Sending commits

For more significant changes, you might want to work in several steps and send each commit separately. Here is the suggested workflow 

  ~$ git pull                 # make sure your repo is up to date
  ~$ git branch my-changes    # create a new branch
  ~$ git checkout my-changes  # switch to this new branch

… make some changes (1) … 

  ~$ git commit -m "This is change (1)"  # Commit your change

… make another change (2) … 

  ~$ git commit -m "This is change (2)"  # Commit your change
  ~$ git format-patch master             # Creates two patches

… Then two patches for your two commits are ready to be sent to the list and detected by the patchwork server.

Write useful commit messages: unless your change is very small, please provide 1) a reason for it in your email and 2) a ChangeLog entry in the commit message.

Sharing changes from a public branch

For more significant contributions, the best way to submit patches is through public branches of your repository clone.

  1. Clone our git repository at http://orgmode.org/w/org-mode.git
  2. Create a repository that can be publicly accessed, for example on GitHub, repo.or.cz, or on your own server.
  3. Push your topic branches (and optionally the master branch) to your public repository.

    Define a remote for your public repository you push topics to. 

    git remote add REMOTE URL-GOES-HERE

    Push branches to the remote 

    git push REMOTE BRANCH1 [BRANCH2 BRANCH3 ...]

    e.g. 

    git remote add github ssh://.../     # Done once to define the remote 'github'
git push github my-topic
  4. Do your work on topic-specific branches, using a branch name that relates to what you are working on.
  5. Often do 
    git remote update

    to pull commits from all defined remote repositories, in particular the org-mode master at orgmode.org (or its clone at repo.or.cz.)

  6. When you have something workable, publish the git path and branch name on the mailing list, so that people can test it and review your work.
  7. After your topic has been merged to the project master branch you can delete the topic on your local and remote repositories. 
    git branch -d NEWTOPIC
git push REMOTE :NEWTOPIC

Commit messages and ChangeLog entries

We have decided to no longer keep a ChangeLog file to record changes to individual functions. In a modern version control system like git, ChangeLog is duplicating information that should be in the commit message, and it is the main cause of merge conflicts.

Instead, the change log entry should be part of the commit message. A commit message should be constructed in the following way:

  • Line 1 of the commit message should always be a short description of the overall change. Line 1 does not get a dot at the end.
  • Line 2 is an empty line
  • In line 3, the ChangeLog entry should start, in a similar format as in the old ChangeLog files, but without the author information (which is part of the commit anyway).
  • After the changelog, another empty line should come before any additional information that the committer wishes to provide in order to explain the patch.
  • If the change is a minor change made by a committer without copyright assignment to the FSF, the commit message should also contain the cookie TINYCHANGE (anywhere in the message). When we later produce the ChangeLog file for Emacs, the change will be marked appropriately.

Here is an example for such a message 

Capture: Fix the case of using a template file
    
* lisp/org-capture.el (org-capture-set-plist): Make sure txt is a string
before calling `string-match'.
(org-capture-templates): Fix customization type.
* doc/org.texi (Capture): Document using a file for a template
    
The problem here was that a wrong keyword was given in the
customization type.  This let to a string-match against a list value.

Modified from a patch proposal by Johan Friis.

TINYCHANGE

If you are using magit.el in Emacs, The ChangeLog-like such entries are easily made by pressing C in the diff listing. Another option to make the entries is to use `C-x 4 a' in the changed function. This will create entries in the ChangeLog file, and you can then cut and paste these to the commit message and remove the indentation.

Copyrighted contributors to Org-mode

Here is the list of people who have contributed actual code to the Org-mode core. Note that the manual contains a more extensive list with acknowledgments, including contributed ideas! The lists below are mostly for house keeping, to help the maintainers keep track of copyright issues.

Current contributors

Here is the list of people who signed the papers with the Free Software Foundation and can now freely submit code to Org files that are included within GNU Emacs:

  1. Adam Elliott
  2. Andreas Burtzlaff
  3. Andreas Leha
  4. Andy Steward
  5. Anthony Lander
  6. Baoqiu Cui
  7. Barry Leonard Gidden
  8. Bastien Guerry
  9. Benjamin Andresen
  10. Bernd Grobauer
  11. Bernt Hansen
  12. Brian James Gough
  13. Carsten Dominik
  14. Charles Sebold
  15. Christian Egli
  16. Christian Moe
  17. Christopher League
  18. Christopher Miles Gray
  19. Christopher Suckling
  20. Dan Davison
  21. Daniel M German
  22. Daniel M. Hackney
  23. David Maus
  24. David O'Toole
  25. Eric S. Fraga
  26. Eric Schulte
  27. Erik Iverson
  28. Giovanni Ridolfi
  29. Ian Barton
  30. James TD Smith
  31. Jan Böker
  32. Jason Riedy
  33. Jeffrey Ryan Horn
  34. Joel Boehland
  35. John Wiegley
  36. Juan Pechiar
  37. Julian Gehring
  38. Julien Barnier
  39. Julien Danjou
  40. Konstantin Antipin
  41. Lawrence Mitchell
  42. Lennart Borgman
  43. Lukasz Stelmach
  44. Magnus Henoch
  45. Manuel Giraud
  46. Martin Pohlack
  47. Martyn Jago
  48. Matt Lundin
  49. Max Mikhanosha
  50. Michael Brand
  51. Michael Gauland
  52. Michael Sperber
  53. Miguel A. Figueroa-Villanueva
  54. Mikael Fornius
  55. Nathan Neff
  56. Nicolas Goaziou
  57. Niels Giessen
  58. Noorul Islam K M
  59. Paul Sexton
  60. Peter Jones
  61. Pieter Praet
  62. Phil Jackson
  63. Philip Rooke
  64. Piotr Zielinski
  65. Puneeth Chaganti
  66. Richard Klinda
  67. Richard Riley
  68. Ross Patterson
  69. Russel Adams
  70. Sacha Chua
  71. Sebastian Rose
  72. Sebastien Vauban
  73. Sergey Litvinov
  74. Seweryn Kokot
  75. Stephen Eglen
  76. Thomas Holst
  77. Thorsten Jolitz
  78. Tassilo Horn
  79. Thomas Baumann
  80. Thomas S. Dye
  81. Tokuya Kameshima
  82. Tom Breton
  83. Tomas Hlavaty
  84. Ulf Stegemann
  85. Zhang Weize

Processing

These people have been asked to sign the papers, and they are currently considering it or a request is being processed by the FSF.

  1. Chris Gray

Tiny Changes

These people have submitted tiny change patches that made it into Org without FSF papers. When they submit more, we need to get papers eventually. The limit is a cumulative change of 20 non-repetitive change lines. Details are given in this document.

  1. Robert P. Goldman
  2. Andy Lutomirski
  3. Ethan Ligon

(this list may be incomplete - please help to complete it)

No FSF assignment

These people cannot or prefer to not sign the FSF copyright papers, and we can only accept patches that do not change the core files (the ones that are also in Emacs).

Luckily, this list is still empty.