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The XRP Ledger has many and diverse stakeholders, and everyone deserves a chance to contribute meaningful changes to the code that runs the XRPL.

Contributing

We assume you are familiar with the general practice of making contributions on GitHub. This file includes only special instructions specific to this project.

Before you start

In general, contributions should be developed in your personal fork.

The following branches exist in the main project repository:

  • develop: The latest set of unreleased features, and the most common starting point for contributions.
  • release: The latest beta release or release candidate.
  • master: The latest stable release.
  • gh-pages: The documentation for this project, built by Doxygen.

The tip of each branch must be signed. In order for GitHub to sign a squashed commit that it builds from your pull request, GitHub must know your verifying key. Please set up signature verification.

Major contributions

If your contribution is a major feature or breaking change, then you must first write an XRP Ledger Standard (XLS) describing it. Go to XRPL-Standards, choose the next available standard number, and open a discussion with an appropriate title to propose your draft standard.

When you submit a pull request, please link the corresponding XLS in the description. An XLS still in draft status is considered a work-in-progress and open for discussion. Please allow time for questions, suggestions, and changes to the XLS draft. It is the responsibility of the XLS author to update the draft to match the final implementation when its corresponding pull request is merged, unless the author delegates that responsibility to others.

Before making a pull request

Changes that alter transaction processing must be guarded by an Amendment. All other changes that maintain the existing behavior do not need an Amendment.

Ensure that your code compiles according to the build instructions in BUILD.md. If you create new source files, they must go under src/ripple. You will need to add them to one of the source lists in CMake.

Please write tests for your code. If you create new test source files, they must go under src/test. You will need to add them to one of the source lists in CMake. If your test can be run offline, in under 60 seconds, then it can be an automatic test run by rippled --unittest. Otherwise, it must be a manual test.

The source must be formatted according to the style guide below.

Header includes must be levelized.

Pull requests

In general, pull requests use develop as the base branch.

(Hotfixes are an exception.)

Changes to pull requests must be added as new commits. Once code reviewers have started looking at your code, please avoid force-pushing a branch in a pull request. This preserves the ability for reviewers to filter changes since their last review.

A pull request must obtain approvals from at least two reviewers before it can be considered for merge by a Maintainer. Maintainers retain discretion to require more approvals if they feel the credibility of the existing approvals is insufficient.

Pull requests must be merged by squash-and-merge to preserve a linear history for the develop branch.

Style guide

This is a non-exhaustive list of recommended style guidelines. These are not always strictly enforced and serve as a way to keep the codebase coherent rather than a set of thou shalt not commandments.

Formatting

All code must conform to clang-format version 10, according to the settings in .clang-format, unless the result would be unreasonably difficult to read or maintain. To demarcate lines that should be left as-is, surround them with comments like this:

// clang-format off
...
// clang-format on

You can format individual files in place by running clang-format -i <file>... from any directory within this project.

You can install a pre-commit hook to automatically run clang-format before every commit:

pip3 install pre-commit
pre-commit install

Unit Tests

To execute all unit tests:

rippled --unittest --unittest-jobs=<number of cores>

(Note: Using multiple cores on a Mac M1 can cause spurious test failures. The cause is still under investigation. If you observe this problem, try specifying fewer jobs.)

To run a specific set of test suites:

rippled --unittest TestSuiteName

Note: In this example, all tests with prefix TestSuiteName will be run, so if TestSuiteName1 and TestSuiteName2 both exist, then both tests will run. Alternatively, if the unit test name finds an exact match, it will stop doing partial matches, i.e. if a unit test with a title of TestSuiteName exists, then no other unit test will be executed, apart from TestSuiteName.

Avoid

  1. Proliferation of nearly identical code.
  2. Proliferation of new files and classes.
  3. Complex inheritance and complex OOP patterns.
  4. Unmanaged memory allocation and raw pointers.
  5. Macros and non-trivial templates (unless they add significant value).
  6. Lambda patterns (unless these add significant value).
  7. CPU or architecture-specific code unless there is a good reason to include it, and where it is used, guard it with macros and provide explanatory comments.
  8. Importing new libraries unless there is a very good reason to do so.

Seek to

  1. Extend functionality of existing code rather than creating new code.
  2. Prefer readability over terseness where important logic is concerned.
  3. Inline functions that are not used or are not likely to be used elsewhere in the codebase.
  4. Use clear and self-explanatory names for functions, variables, structs and classes.
  5. Use TitleCase for classes, structs and filenames, camelCase for function and variable names, lower case for namespaces and folders.
  6. Provide as many comments as you feel that a competent programmer would need to understand what your code does.

Maintainers

Maintainers are ecosystem participants with elevated access to the repository. They are able to push new code, make decisions on when a release should be made, etc.

Adding and removing

New maintainers can be proposed by two existing maintainers, subject to a vote by a quorum of the existing maintainers. A minimum of 50% support and a 50% participation is required. In the event of a tie vote, the addition of the new maintainer will be rejected.

Existing maintainers can resign, or be subject to a vote for removal at the behest of two existing maintainers. A minimum of 60% agreement and 50% participation are required. The XRP Ledger Foundation will have the ability, for cause, to remove an existing maintainer without a vote.

Current Maintainers