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PocketMine-MP Contribution Guidelines

PocketMine-MP is an open source project, and contributions from the community are welcomed, as long as they comply with our quality standards and licensing.

Code contributions must be submitted using GitHub Pull Requests, where they will be reviewed by maintainers.

Small contributions (e.g. minor bug fixes) can be submitted as pull requests directly.

Larger contributions like feature additions should be preceded by a Change Proposal to allow maintainers and other people to discuss and decide if it's a good idea or not.

Useful documentation from github.com

Other things you'll need

List of pocketmine namespaces which are in other repos

PocketMine-MP has several dependencies which are independent from the main server code. Most of them use the pocketmine namespace. Some of these add extra classes to packages which already exist in PocketMine-MP.

Take a look at the table below if you can't find the class or function you're looking for.

Source URL Namespace, class or function
pmmp/BedrockProtocol pocketmine\network\mcpe\protocol
pmmp/BinaryUtils pocketmine\utils\BinaryDataException
pocketmine\utils\BinaryStream
pocketmine\utils\Binary
pmmp/Color pocketmine\color
pmmp/ErrorHandler pocketmine\errorhandler
pmmp/Log AttachableLogger
BufferedLogger
GlobalLogger
LogLevel
Logger
PrefixedLogger
SimpleLogger
pmmp/Math pocketmine\math
pmmp/NBT pocketmine\nbt
pmmp/RakLibIpc raklib\server\ipc
pmmp/RakLib raklib
pmmp/Snooze pocketmine\snooze
pmmp/ext-chunkutils2 pocketmine\world\format\LightArray
pocketmine\world\format\PalettedBlockArray
pocketmine\world\format\io\SubChunkConverter
pmmp/ext-morton morton2d_decode
morton2d_encode
morton3d_decode
morton3d_encode
pmmp/ext-libdeflate libdeflate_deflate_compress
libdeflate_gzip_compress
libdeflate_zlib_compress

Choosing a target branch

PocketMine-MP has three primary branches of development.

Type of change stable minor-next major-next
Bug fixes ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Improvements to API docs ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Cleaning up code ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Changing code formatting or style ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Addition of new core features ❌ 🟡 Only if non-disruptive ✔️
Changing core behaviour (e.g. making something use threads) ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Addition of new configuration options ❌ 🟡 Only if optional ✔️
Addition of new API classes, methods or constants ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Deprecating API classes, methods or constants ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Adding optional parameters to an API method ❌ ✔️ ✔️
Changing API behaviour ❌ 🟡 Only if backwards-compatible ✔️
Removal of API ❌ ❌ ✔️
Backwards-incompatible API change (e.g. renaming a method) ❌ ❌ ✔️
Backwards-incompatible internals change (e.g. changing things in pocketmine\network\mcpe) ❌ ✔️ ✔️

Notes

  • Non-disruptive means that usage should not be significantly altered by the change.
    • Examples of non-disruptive changes include adding new commands, or gameplay features like blocks and items.
    • Examples of disruptive changes include changing the way the server is run, world format changes (since those require downtime for the user to convert their world).
  • API includes all public and protected classes, functions and constants (unless marked as @internal).
    • Private members are not part of the API, unless in a trait.
    • The pocketmine\network\mcpe package is considered implicitly @internal in its entirety (see its README for more details).
  • Minecraft's protocol changes are considered necessary internal changes, and are not subject to the same rules.
    • Protocol changes must always be released in a new minor version, since they disrupt user experience by requiring a client update.
  • BC-breaking changes to the internal network API are allowed, but only in new minor versions. This ensures that plugins which use the internal network API will not break (though they shouldn't use such API anyway).

Making a pull request

The basic procedure to create a pull request is:

  1. Fork the repository on GitHub. This gives you your own copy of the repository to make changes to.
  2. Create a branch on your fork for your changes.
  3. Make the changes you want to make on this branch.
  4. You can then make a pull request to the project.

Pull request reviews

Pull requests will be reviewed by maintainers when they are available. Note that there might be a long wait time before a reviewer looks at your PR.

Depending on the changes, maintainers might ask you to make changes to the PR to fix problems or to improve the code. Do not delete your fork while your pull request remains open, otherwise you won't be able to make any requested changes and the PR will end up being declined.

Requirements

The following are required as a minimum for pull requests. PRs that don't meet these requirements will be declined unless updated to meet them.

  • All code must be licensed under the LGPLv3 license as per PocketMine-MP's own license, or a compatible license.
    • By proposing a pull request, you agree to your code being distributed within PocketMine-MP under the same license.
    • If you take code from other projects, that code MUST be licensed under an LGPL-compatible license.
  • PRs should be about ONE thing
    • If you want to make multiple changes, those changes should each be contributed as separate pull requests. DO NOT mix unrelated changes.
    • Do not include unnecessary changes. This makes the code diff larger and more noisy, making it harder to review.
      • Don't change things that aren't related to the PR's objective
      • Don't reformat or rearrange existing code without a good reason related to the PR's objective
      • Don't rewrite existing code just to make it "look nicer"
      • Don't change PhpDocs to native types in code you didn't write, unless that's the objective of the PR
  • Test code changes, and tell us what tests have been done.
    • Where possible, PHPUnit tests should be written for new or changed code. If that's not possible (e.g. for in-game functionality), the code must be tested manually and details of the tests done must be provided.
    • Simply saying "Tested" is not acceptable and could lead to your PR being declined.
  • Code, comments and documentation must be written in American English. English is the shared languages of all current maintainers.
  • Code must be in the PocketMine-MP style.
    • It's your responsibility to ensure your code matches the formatting and styling of the rest of the code.
    • If you use PhpStorm, a Project code style is provided, which you can use to automatically format new code.
    • You can also use php-cs-fixer to format your code.
  • Use final and private wherever possible.
    • Changing from private to protected or final to non-final doesn't break backwards compatibility, but the opposite does.
    • private and final also enable certain performance optimizations which are otherwise not possible.
    • private members can be freely changed, added and removed in the future, so it's ideal for internal functions. Abusing protected makes internal improvements inconvenient.
    • "Let's leave it protected/public in case someone needs it for ... idk what" is not a valid reason to expose things. If there isn't a clear reason for something to be accessible from the outside, don't expose it.
    • This is a lesson learned through years of experience. You may not like it, but it's for the best.
  • Immutable things are almost always preferred.
    • Do not add unnecessary setters or public writable properties to classes. As above, "Let's leave it in case someone needs it" is not a valid reason to expose things.
    • Mutable classes and properties are unpredictable, since code has no way to know if the object it's working with might be randomly modified by another part of the code. This makes it harder to maintain code and debug issues.
    • Most classes exist only to hold some data. These are called "data transfer objects" (DTOs). These types of classes should pretty much always be immutable.
    • Make use of final, private and readonly modifiers.

Recommendations

  • Be patient. Reviewing pull requests takes a lot of time and energy, and maintainers are often unavailable or busy. Your PR might not receive attention for a while.
    • Remember, PRs with small diffs are much easier to review. Small PRs are generally reviewed and merged much faster than large ones.
  • Start small. Try fixing minor bugs or doing something isolated (e.g. adding a new block or item) before attempting larger changes.
    • This helps you get familiar with the codebase, the contribution process, and the expectations of maintainers.
    • Check out the issues page for something that you could tackle without too much effort.
  • Do not copy-paste other people's code. Many PRs involve discussion about the changes, and changes are often requested by reviewers. If you don't understand the code you're copy-pasting, your PR is likely to fail.
  • Do not edit code directly on github.com. We recommend learning how to use git. git allows you to "clone" a repository onto your computer, so that you can make changes using an IDE.
  • Use an IDE, not a text editor. We recommend PhpStorm or VSCode.
  • Do not make large pull requests without an RFC.
    • Large changes should be discussed beforehand using the RFC / Change Proposal process.
    • Large changes are much harder to review, and are more likely to be declined if maintainers don't have a good idea what you're trying to do in advance.
  • Create a new branch on your fork for each pull request. This allows you to use the same fork to make multiple pull requests at the same time.
  • Make your PR diff as small as possible. Smaller PRs are much more likely to be accepted, as they are easier to review.
    • Avoid moving code around in files if possible.
    • Don't make random CS changes. This makes the diff noisier and harder to review.
  • Use descriptive commit titles. You can see an example here.
  • Split unrelated changes into multiple commits.
    • An atomic style for commits is preferred - this means that changes included in a commit should be part of a single distinct change set.
    • If you need to use "and" or "multiple changes" in your commit message, the commit probably needs to be split up. There are exceptions, but this is a good rule of thumb.
    • See this link for more information on atomic commits.
    • See the documentation on git add -i or git add -p for information on how to split up local changes for committing.

Thanks for contributing to PocketMine-MP!

RFCs / Change Proposals

Change Proposals are issues or discussions which describe a new feature proposal or behavioural change. They are used to get feedback from maintainers and the community about an idea for a change, to decide whether or not it's a good idea.

Submitting an RFC

RFCs should be submitted using Issues or Discussions. RFCs can be submitted as pull requests if you've already written the code, but this is not recommended, since it's not guaranteed that an RFC will pass, in which case your effort would be wasted.

RFCs should include the following:

  • A summary of what you want to change
  • Why you want to change it (e.g. what problems it solves)
  • Alternative methods you've considered to solve the problem. This should include any possible ways that what you want can be done without the change.

Voting on RFCs

Community members can vote on RFCs. This gives maintainers an idea of how popular the idea is. Votes can be cast using 👍 and 👎 reactions.

Please don't downvote without providing a reason why!

Implementing RFCs

Anyone can write the code to implement an RFC, and submit a pull request for it. It doesn't have to be the RFC author.

Implementations should be submitted as pull requests. The pull request description must include a link to the RFC.