Mirror/CONTRIBUTING.md

# Contribution Guide

## Introduction

First off, thank you for considering contributing to this project. It's people like you that make it such a great tool.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue, assessing changes, and helping you finalize your pull requests.

This is an open source project and we love to receive contributions from our community — you! There are many ways to contribute, from writing tutorials or blog posts, improving the documentation, submitting bug reports and feature requests or writing code which can be incorporated into the main project itself.

If you haven't already, come find us in [Discord](https://discord.gg/wvesC6). We want you working on things you're excited about, and we can give you instant feedback.

### I don't want to read this whole thing I just have a question!!

We currently allow our users to use the issue tracker for support questions. But please be wary that maintaining an open source project can take a lot of time from the maintainers. If asking for a support question, state it clearly and take the time to explain your problem properly. Also, if your problem is not strictly related to this project we recommend you to use [Stack Overlow](https://stackoverflow.com) instead.

## How Can I Contribute?

### Testing

We have a handful of unit tests, but most of our testbed consists of running it with existing projects. 
Try our builds and pull requests in your own projects and let us know how it goes.

### Reporting Bugs

Before creating bug reports, please check the existing bug reports as you might find out that you don't need to create one. When you are creating a bug report, please include as many details as possible.

#### How Do I Submit A (Good) Bug Report?

[Create an issue](https://github.com/vis2k/Mirror/issues/new?template=bug_report.md) on the project's repository and provide the following information.

Explain the problem and include additional details to help maintainers reproduce the problem:

* **Use a clear and descriptive title** for the issue to identify the problem.
* **Provide a simplified project that reproduces the issue whenever possible.**
* **Describe the exact steps which reproduce the problem** in as many details as possible. For example, start by explaining how you used the project. When listing steps, **don't just say what you did, but explain how you did it**.
* **Provide specific examples to demonstrate the steps**. It's always better to get more information. You can include links to files or GitHub projects, copy/pasteable snippets or even print screens or animated GIFS. If you're providing snippets in the issue, use [Markdown code blocks](https://help.github.com/articles/markdown-basics/#multiple-lines).
* **Describe the behavior you observed after following the steps** and point out what exactly is the problem with that behavior.
* **Explain which behavior you expected to see instead and why.**
* **If the problem wasn't triggered by a specific action**, describe what you were doing before the problem happened and share more information using the guidelines below.

Provide more context by answering these questions:

* **Did the problem start happening recently** (e.g. after updating to a new version) or was this always a problem?
* If the problem started happening recently, **can you reproduce the problem in an older version?** What's the most recent version in which the problem doesn't happen?
* **Can you reliably reproduce the issue?** If not, provide details about how often the problem happens and under which conditions it normally happens.

Include details about your configuration and environment:

* **Which version of the project are you using?**
* **What's the name and version of the OS you're using**?
* **Any other information that could be useful about you environment**

### Suggesting Enhancements

This section guides you through submitting an enhancement suggestion for this project, including completely new features and minor improvements to existing functionality. Following these guidelines helps maintainers and the community understand your suggestion and find related suggestions.

Before creating enhancement suggestions, please check the list of enhancements suggestions in the issue tracker as you might find out that you don't need to create one. When you are creating an enhancement suggestion, please include as many details as possible.

#### How Do I Submit A (Good) Enhancement Suggestion?

[Create an issue](https://github.com/vis2k/Mirror/issues/new?template=feature_request.md) on the project's repository and provide the following information:

* **Use a clear and descriptive title** for the issue to identify the suggestion.
* **Provide a step-by-step description of the suggested enhancement** in as many details as possible.
* **Provide specific examples to demonstrate the steps**. It's always better to get more information. You can include links to files or GitHub projects, copy/pasteable snippets or even print screens or animated GIFS. If you're providing snippets in the issue, use [Markdown code blocks](https://help.github.com/articles/markdown-basics/#multiple-lines).
* **Describe the current behavior** and **explain which behavior you expected to see instead** and why.
* **List some other similar projects where this enhancement exists.**
* **Specify which version of the project you're using.**
* **Specify the current environment you're using.** if this is a useful information.
* **Provide a specific use case** - Often we get requests for a feature not realizing there is already a way to fulfill their use case. In other words, don't just give us a solution, give us a problem.


### Creating Pull Requests

#### How Do I Submit A (Good) Pull Request?

Please send a [GitHub Pull Request](https://github.com/vis2k/Mirror/compare) with a clear list of what you've done (read more about [pull requests](http://help.github.com/pull-requests/)). 
When you send a pull request, we will love you forever if you include unit tests. 
We can always use more test coverage. 

* **Use a clear and descriptive title** for the pull request to state the improvement you made to the code or the bug you solved.
* **Provide a link to the related issue** if the pull request is a follow up of an existing bug report or enhancement suggestion.
* **Comment why this pull request represents an enhancement** and give a rationale explaining why you did it that way and not another way.
* **Use the same coding style as the one used in this project**.
* **Welcome suggestions from the maintainers to improve your pull request**.

Please follow our coding conventions (below) and make sure all of your commits are atomic (one feature per commit). Rebase your pull requests if necessary.

Always write a clear log message for your commits. One-line messages are fine for small changes, but bigger changes should look like this:

```sh
$ git commit -m "A brief summary of the commit""
> 
> A paragraph describing what changed and its impact.
```

Submit your pull requests to the right branch:
* Submit against the 2018 branch when the change **only** applies to Unity 2018.2+
* Submit against the master branch in all other cases
  
If your pull request breaks any test,  it has no hope of being merged.

## Coding conventions

Start reading our code and you'll get the hang of it. We optimize for readability:

* We indent using 4 spaces (soft tabs)
* We value simplicity. The code should be easy to read and avoid magic
* **KISS / Occam's Razor** - always use the most simple solution.
* **No Premature Optimizations**
	MMOs need to run for weeks without issues or exploits.
	If you want your code to run 1% faster, spend \$100 on a better CPU.
* **Curly Braces { }**  
    Always use braces even for one line if's. Unity did this everywhere, and there is value in not accidentally missing a line in an if statement because there were no braces.
* **Variable naming**  
    \`NetworkIdentity identity\`, not \`NetworkIdentity uv\` or similar. If the variable needs a comment the name needs to be changed. For example, `msg = ... // the message` use `message = ...` without a comment instead
* **private** 
    Fields and methods in a class are private by default, no need to use the private keyword there.
    Note fields and methods are public by default in structs so it might be necessary there.
* This is open source software. Consider the people who will read your code, and make it look nice for them. It's sort of like driving a car: Perhaps you love doing donuts when you're alone, but with passengers the goal is to make the ride as smooth as possible.

**One Python Way**
Unlike Python, C# has different ways to do the same thing, which causes endless discussions and pull requests to change from one way to the other. Let's always use the most simple, most obvious way:
  * **type** vs. **var**: always use 'int x' instead of 'var x'. Less guess work. Less magic. If we **always** use the proper type then we have to waste no brain cycles on unnecessary decision making.
  * **if** vs. **switch**: any if statement could be converted to switch and back. Again, let's not have endless discussions and use if unless _switch_ makes overwhelmingly much sense. Python doesn't have switch either, they don't have those discussions and pull requests over there.
 
Thanks.