How to contribute to Org?

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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, and send it to assign@gnu.org. The FSF will send you the assignment contract that both you and the FSF will sign. Please let the Org-mode maintainer know when this process is complete. Some people consider this assignment process 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?

By submitting patches to emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, or by pushing changes to the Org-mode repository, you are placing these changes under the same licensing terms as those under which GNU Emacs is published. 

;; GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
;; (at your option) any later version.

If at the time you submit or push these changes you do have active copyright assignment papers with the FSF, for future changes to either Org-mode or to Emacs, this means that copyright to these changes is automatically transferred to the FSF. The Org-mode repository is seen as upstream repository for Emacs, anything contained in it can potentially end up in Emacs. If you do not have signed papers with the FSF, only changes to files in the contrib/ part of the repository will be accepted, as well as very minor changes (so-called tiny changes) to core files. We will ask you to sign FSF papers at the moment we attempt to move a contrib/ file into the Org core, or into Emacs.

For Org developers

  1. Send your public key to Jason Dunsmore or Org's maintainer.
  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.
  5. Run make test
  6. If the tests pass, push your changes.

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 major and minor changes.

When sending a patch (either using git diff or git format-patch) please always add a properly formatted Emacs ChangeLog entry. See this section for details on how to create such a ChangeLog.

Sending commits

For every patch you send, we suggest to use git format-patch.

This is easy for small patches and more consequent ones. Sometimes, you might even 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 from master
~$ 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.

Write useful commit messages: please provide 1) a reason for it in your email and 2) a ChangeLog entry in the commit message (see this section on how to format a ChangeLog entry.)

Sending quick fixes for testing purpose

If you want to send a quick fix that needs to be further tested by other people (before you submit a real patch), here is how you can do:

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.

Note that small patches sent like this still need to have a ChangeLog entry to be applied. If your patch looks good to you, it's always better to send a patch through git format-patch.

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. You can clone using any of the commands below. 
    git clone git://orgmode.org/org-mode.git
git clone http://orgmode.org/org-mode.git

    The url using the git protocol is preferred. If you are behind a firewall that blocks git://, you can use the http url.

  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 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

The instructions above are generally useful to let people test new features before sending the patch series to the mailing list, but the patches remain the preferred way of receiving contributions.

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 and does not start with a star.
  • 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.
  • Variables and functions names are quoted like =`this'= (backquote and single quote).
  • Sentences should be separated by two spaces.
  • Sentences should start with an uppercase letter.
  • Avoid the passive form: i.e., use "change" instead of "changed".

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. Aaron Ecay
  2. Abdó Roig-Maranges
  3. Achim Gratz
  4. Adam Elliott
  5. Adam Spiers
  6. Alan Schmitt
  7. Andreas Burtzlaff
  8. Andreas Leha
  9. Andrew Hyatt
  10. Andrzej Lichnerowicz
  11. Andy Steward
  12. Anthony John Day
  13. Anthony Lander
  14. Baoqiu Cui
  15. Barry Leonard Gidden
  16. Bastien Guerry
  17. Benjamin Andresen
  18. Bernd Grobauer
  19. Bernt Hansen
  20. Brian James Gough
  21. Carsten Dominik
  22. Charles Sebold
  23. Christian Egli
  24. Christian Moe
  25. Christopher League
  26. Christopher Miles Gray
  27. Christopher Schmidt
  28. Christopher Suckling
  29. Dan Davison
  30. Daniel M German
  31. Daniel M. Hackney
  32. David Maus
  33. David O'Toole
  34. Dmitry Antipov
  35. Eric Abrahamsen
  36. Eric S. Fraga
  37. Eric Schulte
  38. Erik Iverson
  39. Ethan Ligon
  40. Feng Shu
  41. Francesco Pizzolante
  42. Gary Oberbrunner
  43. George Kettleborough
  44. Giovanni Ridolfi
  45. Grégoire Jadi (aka Daimrod)
  46. Henning Dietmar Weiss
  47. Ian Barton
  48. Ilya Shlyakhter
  49. Ippei Furuhashi
  50. James TD Smith
  51. Jan Böcker
  52. Jarmo Hurri
  53. Jason Riedy
  54. Jay Kerns
  55. Jeffrey Ryan Horn
  56. Joel Boehland
  57. John Wiegley
  58. Jonas Bernoulli
  59. Jonathan Leech-Pepin
  60. Juan Pechiar
  61. Julian Gehring
  62. Julien Barnier
  63. Julien Danjou
  64. Justus Piater
  65. Konstantin Antipin
  66. Lawrence Mitchell
  67. Le Wang
  68. Lennart Borgman
  69. Luis Anaya
  70. Lukasz Stelmach
  71. Madan Ramakrishnan
  72. Magnus Henoch
  73. Manuel Giraud
  74. Martin Pohlack
  75. Martyn Jago
  76. Matt Lundin
  77. Max Mikhanosha
  78. Michael Brand
  79. Michael Gauland
  80. Michael Sperber
  81. Miguel A. Figueroa-Villanueva
  82. Mikael Fornius
  83. Moritz Ulrich
  84. Nathan Neff
  85. Nicolas Goaziou
  86. Nicolas Richard
  87. Niels Giessen
  88. Noorul Islam K M
  89. Paul Sexton
  90. Peter Jones
  91. Phil Jackson
  92. Philip Rooke
  93. Pieter Praet
  94. Piotr Zielinski
  95. Puneeth Chaganti
  96. Richard Klinda
  97. Richard Riley
  98. Rick Frankel
  99. Ross Patterson
  100. Russel Adams
  101. Ryo Takaishi
  102. Sacha Chua
  103. Samuel Loury
  104. Sebastian Rose
  105. Sebastien Vauban
  106. Sergey Litvinov
  107. Seweryn Kokot
  108. Stephen Eglen
  109. Suvayu Ali
  110. T.F. Torrey
  111. Tassilo Horn
  112. Thomas Baumann
  113. Thomas Holst
  114. Thomas S. Dye
  115. Thorsten Jolitz
  116. Tim Burt
  117. Toby Cubitt
  118. Tokuya Kameshima
  119. Tom Breton
  120. Tomas Hlavaty
  121. Tony Day
  122. Ulf Stegemann
  123. Yann Hodique
  124. Yasushi Shoji
  125. 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.

  • Bill Wishon
  • Mats Kindahl (as of 2013-04-06) for this patch

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. Alan Schmitt
  2. Andy Lutomirski
  3. Ivan Vilata i Balaguer
  4. John Foerch
  5. Myles English
  6. Rafael Laboissiere
  7. Robert P. Goldman
  8. Muchenxuan Tong

(This list may be incomplete - please help completing 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.

Documentation from the http://orgmode.org/worg/ website (either in its HTML format or in its Org format) is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 or later. The code examples and css stylesheets are licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 or later.