1# How to contribute # 2 3We'd love to accept your patches and contributions to this project. There are 4a just a few small guidelines you need to follow. 5 6 7## Contributor License Agreement ## 8 9Contributions to any Google project must be accompanied by a Contributor 10License Agreement. This is not a copyright **assignment**, it simply gives 11Google permission to use and redistribute your contributions as part of the 12project. 13 14 * If you are an individual writing original source code and you're sure you 15 own the intellectual property, then you'll need to sign an [individual 16 CLA][]. 17 18 * If you work for a company that wants to allow you to contribute your work, 19 then you'll need to sign a [corporate CLA][]. 20 21You generally only need to submit a CLA once, so if you've already submitted 22one (even if it was for a different project), you probably don't need to do it 23again. 24 25[individual CLA]: https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/individual 26[corporate CLA]: https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/corporate 27 28Once your CLA is submitted (or if you already submitted one for 29another Google project), make a commit adding yourself to the 30[AUTHORS][] and [CONTRIBUTORS][] files. This commit can be part 31of your first [pull request][]. 32 33[AUTHORS]: AUTHORS 34[CONTRIBUTORS]: CONTRIBUTORS 35 36 37## Submitting a patch ## 38 39 1. It's generally best to start by opening a new issue describing the bug or 40 feature you're intending to fix. Even if you think it's relatively minor, 41 it's helpful to know what people are working on. Mention in the initial 42 issue that you are planning to work on that bug or feature so that it can 43 be assigned to you. 44 45 1. Follow the normal process of [forking][] the project, and setup a new 46 branch to work in. It's important that each group of changes be done in 47 separate branches in order to ensure that a pull request only includes the 48 commits related to that bug or feature. 49 50 1. Do your best to have [well-formed commit messages][] for each change. 51 This provides consistency throughout the project, and ensures that commit 52 messages are able to be formatted properly by various git tools. 53 54 1. Finally, push the commits to your fork and submit a [pull request][]. 55 56[forking]: https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo 57[well-formed commit messages]: http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html 58[pull request]: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request 59