1 # How to become a contributor and submit your own code
3 ## Contributor License Agreements
5 We'd love to accept your patches! Before we can take them, we have to jump a
6 couple of legal hurdles.
8 Please fill out either the individual or corporate Contributor License Agreement
11 * If you are an individual writing original source code and you're sure you
12 own the intellectual property, then you'll need to sign an
13 [individual CLA](https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/individual).
14 * If you work for a company that wants to allow you to contribute your work,
15 then you'll need to sign a
16 [corporate CLA](https://developers.google.com/open-source/cla/corporate).
18 Follow either of the two links above to access the appropriate CLA and
19 instructions for how to sign and return it. Once we receive it, we'll be able to
20 accept your pull requests.
24 If you are a Googler, please make an attempt to submit an internal contribution
25 rather than a GitHub Pull Request. If you are not able to submit internally, a
26 PR is acceptable as an alternative.
28 ## Contributing A Patch
30 1. Submit an issue describing your proposed change to the
31 [issue tracker](https://github.com/google/googletest/issues).
32 2. Please don't mix more than one logical change per submittal, because it
33 makes the history hard to follow. If you want to make a change that doesn't
34 have a corresponding issue in the issue tracker, please create one.
35 3. Also, coordinate with team members that are listed on the issue in question.
36 This ensures that work isn't being duplicated and communicating your plan
37 early also generally leads to better patches.
38 4. If your proposed change is accepted, and you haven't already done so, sign a
39 Contributor License Agreement
40 ([see details above](#contributor-license-agreements)).
41 5. Fork the desired repo, develop and test your code changes.
42 6. Ensure that your code adheres to the existing style in the sample to which
44 7. Ensure that your code has an appropriate set of unit tests which all pass.
45 8. Submit a pull request.
47 ## The Google Test and Google Mock Communities
49 The Google Test community exists primarily through the
50 [discussion group](https://groups.google.com/group/googletestframework) and the
51 GitHub repository. Likewise, the Google Mock community exists primarily through
52 their own [discussion group](https://groups.google.com/group/googlemock). You
53 are definitely encouraged to contribute to the discussion and you can also help
54 us to keep the effectiveness of the group high by following and promoting the
55 guidelines listed here.
57 ### Please Be Friendly
59 Showing courtesy and respect to others is a vital part of the Google culture,
60 and we strongly encourage everyone participating in Google Test development to
61 join us in accepting nothing less. Of course, being courteous is not the same as
62 failing to constructively disagree with each other, but it does mean that we
63 should be respectful of each other when enumerating the 42 technical reasons
64 that a particular proposal may not be the best choice. There's never a reason to
65 be antagonistic or dismissive toward anyone who is sincerely trying to
66 contribute to a discussion.
68 Sure, C++ testing is serious business and all that, but it's also a lot of fun.
69 Let's keep it that way. Let's strive to be one of the friendliest communities in
72 As always, discuss Google Test in the official GoogleTest discussion group. You
73 don't have to actually submit code in order to sign up. Your participation
74 itself is a valuable contribution.
78 To keep the source consistent, readable, diffable and easy to merge, we use a
79 fairly rigid coding style, as defined by the
80 [google-styleguide](https://github.com/google/styleguide) project. All patches
81 will be expected to conform to the style outlined
82 [here](https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html). Use
83 [.clang-format](https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/main/.clang-format) to
84 check your formatting.
86 ## Requirements for Contributors
88 If you plan to contribute a patch, you need to build Google Test, Google Mock,
89 and their own tests from a git checkout, which has further requirements:
91 * [Python](https://www.python.org/) v3.6 or newer (for running some of the
92 tests and re-generating certain source files from templates)
93 * [CMake](https://cmake.org/) v2.8.12 or newer
95 ## Developing Google Test and Google Mock
97 This section discusses how to make your own changes to the Google Test project.
99 ### Testing Google Test and Google Mock Themselves
101 To make sure your changes work as intended and don't break existing
102 functionality, you'll want to compile and run Google Test and GoogleMock's own
103 tests. For that you can use CMake:
108 cmake -Dgtest_build_tests=ON -Dgmock_build_tests=ON ${GTEST_REPO_DIR}
111 To choose between building only Google Test or Google Mock, you may modify your
112 cmake command to be one of each
115 cmake -Dgtest_build_tests=ON ${GTEST_DIR} # sets up Google Test tests
116 cmake -Dgmock_build_tests=ON ${GMOCK_DIR} # sets up Google Mock tests
119 Make sure you have Python installed, as some of Google Test's tests are written
120 in Python. If the cmake command complains about not being able to find Python
121 (`Could NOT find PythonInterp (missing: PYTHON_EXECUTABLE)`), try telling it
122 explicitly where your Python executable can be found:
125 cmake -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=path/to/python ...
128 Next, you can build Google Test and / or Google Mock and all desired tests. On
129 \*nix, this is usually done by
141 All tests should pass.