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 can submit feature requests -- Org is already mature, but new ideas

you can submit patches -- You can submit patches to the mailing list.

If your patch is against a file that is part of Emacs, then your total contribution (all patches you submit) should change less than 20 lines. 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

you can submit material to the Worg website -- This website is made of

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, send it to assign@gnu.org, and tell the Org-mode maintainer when this process is complete. Some people consider this 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?

For Org developers

Send your public key to Jason Dunsmore.
Wait for confirmation that your public key has been added to the server.
Clone org-mode.git repository like this:

~$ git clone orgmode@orgmode.org:org-mode.git
Commit your changes and push them.

If you are undertaking big changes, please create a dedicated branch for them.

For Org contributors: preferred way of submitting patches

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 minor changes.

As long as these patches are formatted properly, they will be automatically registered at John Wiegley's patchwork server and will then be accepted, rejected, or sent back to the author with a request for modification. In this context, "formatted properly" means that the patches are included either plainly in the mail text, or as text attachments (mime-type text, subtypes "x-patch", "x-diff", or "plain"). In particular, binary types or, even worse, "application/octet-stream" (the asinine default of some mail programs) are not going to be recognized. Please find out how to convince your mail program to send proper attachments. Also, if you include the patch inline, please make sure that your mail program does not reformat it (although there are plenty of places further down the line where that can happen, unfortunately). If you attach the patch, then reformatting is not a problem.

Sending quick fixes

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.

Sending commits

For more significant changes, you might 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
  ~$ 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 and detected by the patchwork server.

Write useful commit messages: unless your change is very small, please provide 1) a reason for it in your email and 2) a ChangeLog entry in the commit message.

For more significant contributions, the best way to submit patches is through public branches of your repository clone.

Clone our git repository at http://orgmode.org/w/org-mode.git

Create a repository that can be publicly accessed, for example on

Push your topic branches (and optionally the master branch) to your

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

Do your work on topic-specific branches, using a branch name that

Often do

git remote update

to pull commits from all defined remote repositories, in particular the org-mode master at repo.or.cz.

When you have something workable, publish the git path and branch

After your topic has been merged to the project master branch you

git branch -d NEWTOPIC

git push REMOTE :NEWTOPIC

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
Line 2 is an empty line
In line 3, the ChangeLog entry should start, in a similar format as
After the changelog, another empty line should come before any
If the change is a minor change made by a committer without

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

:PROPERTIES: :CUSTOM_ID: contributors_with_fsf_papers :END:

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:

Adam Elliott
Andreas Burtzlaff
Andy Steward
Anthony Lander
Baoqiu Cui
Barry Leonard Gidden
Bastien Guerry
Benjamin Andresen
Bernd Grobauer
Bernt Hansen
Brian James Gough
Carsten Dominik
Charles Sebold
Christian Egli
Christopher League
Christopher Miles Gray
Christopher Suckling
Dan Davison
Daniel M German
Daniel M. Hackney
David Maus
David O'Toole
Eric S. Fraga
Eric Schulte
Erik Iverson
Ian Barton
James TD Smith
Jan Böker
Jason Riedy
Jeffrey Ryan Horn
Joel Boehland
John Wiegley
Juan Pechiar
Julien Barnier
Julien Danjou
Konstantin Antipin
Lennart Borgman
Lukasz Stelmach
Magnus Henoch
Manuel Giraud
Martin Pohlack
Martyn Jago
Matt Lundin
Michael Gauland
Michael Sperber
Miguel A. Figueroa-Villanueva
Mikael Fornius
Nathan Neff
Nicolas Goaziou
Noorul Islam K M
Paul Sexton
Peter Jones
Phil Jackson
Philip Rooke
Piotr Zielinski
Puneeth Chaganti
Richard Klinda
Richard Riley
Ross Patterson
Russel Adams
Sacha Chua
Sebastian Rose
Sebastien Vauban
Seweryn Kokot
Stephen Eglen
Tassilo Horn
Thomas Baumann
Tokuya Kameshima
Tom Breton
Tomas Hlavaty
Ulf Stegemann
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.

Chris Gray

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.

Robert P. Goldman
Andy Lutomirski

(this list may be incomplete - please help to complete 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.

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