Contributing to Angular DevKit

We would love for you to contribute to DevKit and help make it even better than it is today! As a contributor, here are the guidelines we would like you to follow:

Code of Conduct
Question or Problem?
Issues and Bugs
Feature Requests
Submission Guidelines
Coding Rules
Commit Message Guidelines
Signing the CLA
Updating the Public API

Code of Conduct

Help us keep Angular open and inclusive. Please read and follow our Code of Conduct.

Got a Question or Problem?

Please, do not open issues for the general support questions as we want to keep GitHub issues for bug reports and feature requests. You've got much better chances of getting your question answered on StackOverflow where the questions should be tagged with tag angular-cli or angular-devkit.

StackOverflow is a much better place to ask questions since:

There are thousands of people willing to help on StackOverflow.
Questions and answers stay available for public viewing so your question / answer might help someone else.
StackOverflow's voting system assures that the best answers are prominently visible.

To save your and our time we will be systematically closing all the issues that are requests for general support and redirecting people to StackOverflow.

If you would like to chat about the question in real-time, you can reach out via our gitter channel.

Found an Issue?

If you find a bug in the source code or a mistake in the documentation, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. Even better, you can submit a Pull Request with a fix.

Want a Feature?

You can request a new feature by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. If you would like to implement a new feature, please submit an issue with a proposal for your work first, to be sure that we can use it. Please consider what kind of change it is:

For a Major Feature, first open an issue and outline your proposal so that it can be discussed. This will also allow us to better coordinate our efforts, prevent duplication of work, and help you to craft the change so that it is successfully accepted into the project.
Small Features can be crafted and directly submitted as a Pull Request.

Submission Guidelines

Submitting an Issue

Before you submit an issue, please search the issue tracker, maybe an issue for your problem already exists and the discussion might inform you of workarounds readily available.

We want to fix all the issues as soon as possible, but before fixing a bug we need to reproduce and confirm it. Having a reproducible scenario gives us wealth of important information without going back & forth to you with additional questions like:

version of Angular CLI used
angular.json configuration
version of Angular DevKit used
3rd-party libraries and their versions
and most importantly - a use-case that fails

A minimal reproduce scenario using allows us to quickly confirm a bug (or point out coding problem) as well as confirm that we are fixing the right problem.

We will be insisting on a minimal reproduce scenario in order to save maintainers time and ultimately be able to fix more bugs. Interestingly, from our experience users often find coding problems themselves while preparing a minimal repository. We understand that sometimes it might be hard to extract essentials bits of code from a larger code-base but we really need to isolate the problem before we can fix it.

Unfortunately we are not able to investigate / fix bugs without a minimal reproduction, so if we don't hear back from you we are going to close an issue that don't have enough info to be reproduced.

You can file new issues by selecting from our new issue templates and filling out the issue template.

Submitting a Pull Request (PR)

Before you submit your Pull Request (PR) consider the following guidelines:

Search GitHub for an open or closed PR that relates to your submission. You don't want to duplicate effort.
Please sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before sending PRs. We cannot accept code without this.
Make your changes in a new git branch:
```
git checkout -b my-fix-branch main
```
Create your patch, including appropriate test cases.
Follow our Coding Rules.
Run the full Angular CLI and DevKit test suite, as described in the developer documentation, and ensure that all tests pass (coming soon).
Commit your changes using a descriptive commit message that follows our commit message conventions. Adherence to these conventions is necessary because release notes are automatically generated from these messages.
```
git commit -a
```
Note: the optional commit -a command line option will automatically "add" and "rm" edited files.
Push your branch to GitHub:
```
git push origin my-fix-branch
```
In GitHub, send a pull request to angular/angular-cli:main.
If we suggest changes then:
- Make the required updates.
- Re-run the Angular DevKit test suites to ensure tests are still passing.
Once your PR is approved and you are done with any follow up changes:
- Rebase to the current main to pre-emptively address any merge conflicts.
```
git rebase upstream/main -i
git push -f
```
- Add the action: merge label and the correct target label (if PR author has the project collaborator status, or else the last reviewer should do this).
- The current caretaker will merge the PR to the target branch(es) within 1-2 business days.

That's it! 🎉 Thank you for your contribution!

After your pull request is merged

After your pull request is merged, you can safely delete your branch and pull the changes from the main (upstream) repository:

Delete the remote branch on GitHub either through the GitHub web UI or your local shell as follows:
```
git push origin --delete my-fix-branch
```
Check out the main branch:
```
git checkout main -f
```
Delete the local branch:
```
git branch -D my-fix-branch
```
Update your local main with the latest upstream version:
```
git pull --ff upstream main
```

Coding Rules

To ensure consistency throughout the source code, keep these rules in mind as you are working:

All features or bug fixes must be tested by one or more specs (unit-tests or e2e-tests).
All public API methods must be documented. (Details TBC).
We follow Google's JavaScript Style Guide, but wrap all code at 100 characters.

Commit Message Guidelines

We have very precise rules over how our git commit messages can be formatted. This leads to more readable messages that are easy to follow when looking through the project history. But also, we use the git commit messages to generate the Angular DevKit change log.

Commit Message Format

Each commit message consists of a header, a body and a footer. The header has a special format that includes a type, a scope and a subject:

<type>(<scope>): <subject>
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>

The header is mandatory and the scope of the header is optional.

Any line of the commit message cannot be longer 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.

Revert

If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with revert: , followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: This reverts commit <hash>., where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.

Type

Must be one of the following:

build: Changes to local repository build system and tooling
ci: Changes to CI configuration and CI specific tooling [2]
docs: Changes which exclusively affects documentation.
feat: Creates a new feature [1]
fix: Fixes a previously discovered failure/bug [1]
perf: Improves performance without any change in functionality or API [1]
refactor: Refactor without any change in functionality or API (includes style changes)
release: A release point in the repository [2]
test: Improvements or corrections made to the project's test suite

^{[1] This type MUST have a scope. See the next section for more information.}
^{[2] This type MUST NOT have a scope. It only applies to general scripts and tooling.}

Scope

The scope should be the name of the npm package affected as perceived by the person reading changelog generated from the commit messages.

The following is the list of supported scopes:

@angular/build
@angular/cli
@angular/create
@angular/pwa
@angular/ssr
@angular-devkit/architect
@angular-devkit/architect-cli
@angular-devkit/build-angular
@angular-devkit/build-webpack
@angular-devkit/core
@angular-devkit/schematics
@angular-devkit/schematics-cli
@ngtools/webpack
@schematics/angular

Subject

The subject contains succinct description of the change:

use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
don't capitalize first letter
be concise and direct
no dot (.) at the end

Examples

Examples of valid commit messages:

fix(@angular/cli): prevent the flubber from grassing
refactor(@schematics/angular): move all JSON classes together

Examples of invalid commit messages:

fix(@angular/cli): add a new XYZ command

This is a feature, not a fix.
ci(@angular/cli): fix publishing workflow

The ci type cannot have a scope.

Body

Just as in the subject, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes". The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.

Footer

The footer can contain information about breaking changes and deprecations. It is also the place to reference GitHub issues, Jira tickets, and other PRs that are related to this commit or that this commit will close. For example:

BREAKING CHANGE: <breaking change summary>
<BLANK LINE>
<breaking change description + migration instructions>
<BLANK LINE>
<BLANK LINE>
Fixes #<issue number>

or

DEPRECATED: <what is deprecated>
<BLANK LINE>
<deprecation description + recommended update path>
<BLANK LINE>
<BLANK LINE>
Closes #<pr number>

Breaking Change section should start with the phrase "BREAKING CHANGE: " followed by a summary of the breaking change, a blank line, and a detailed description of the breaking change that also includes migration instructions.

Similarly, a Deprecation section should start with "DEPRECATED: " followed by a short description of what is deprecated, a blank line, and a detailed description of the deprecation that also mentions the recommended update path.

Signing the CLA

Please sign our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before sending pull requests. For any code changes to be accepted, the CLA must be signed. It's a quick process, we promise!

For individuals we have a simple click-through form.
For corporations we'll need you to print, sign and one of scan+email, fax or mail the form.

Updating the Public API

Our Public API surface is tracked using golden files.

You check all golden files by running:

pnpm public-api:check

If you modified the public API, the test will fail. To update the golden files you need to run:

pnpm public-api:update

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