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Contributing to Ghost

So you're interested in giving us a hand? That's awesome! We've put together some brief guidelines that should help you get started quickly and easily.

There are lots and lots of ways to get involved, this document covers:

Reporting An Issue

If you're about to raise an issue because think you've found a problem with Ghost, or you'd like to make a request for a new feature in the codebase, or any other reason… please read this first.

The GitHub issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports, feature requests, change requests and submitting pull requests, but please respect the following restrictions:

  • Please search for existing issues. Help us keep duplicate issues to a minimum by checking to see if someone has already reported your problem or requested your idea.

  • Please do not use the issue tracker for personal support requests (use the forum or IRC - #ghost on freenode).

  • Please do not derail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.

Bug Reports

A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful - thank you!

Guidelines for bug reports:

  1. Use the GitHub issue search — check if the issue has already been reported.

  2. Check if the issue has been fixed — try to reproduce it using the latest master or look for closed issues in the current milestone.

  3. Isolate the problem — ideally create a reduced test case and a live example.

  4. Include a screencast if relevant - Is your issue about a design or front end feature or bug? The most helpful thing in the world is if we can see what you're talking about. Use LICEcap to quickly and easily record a short screencast (24fps) and save it as an animated gif! Embed it directly into your GitHub issue. Kapow.

  5. Use the Bug Report template below or click this link to start creating a bug report with the template automatically.

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Be sure to include the details of your environment.

Here is a real example

Template Example (click to use):

Short and descriptive example bug report title

### Issue Summary

A summary of the issue and the browser/OS environment in which it occurs. If
suitable, include the steps required to reproduce the bug.

### Steps to Reproduce

1. This is the first step
2. This is the second step
3. Further steps, etc.

Any other information you want to share that is relevant to the issue being
reported. Especially, why do you consider this to be a bug? What do you expect to happen instead?

### Technical details:

* Ghost Version: master (latest commit: 590ba48988b51b9c5e8d99afbb84c997436d7f21)
* Client OS: Mac OS X 10.8.4
* Server OS: CentOS 6.4
* Node Version: 0.10.16
* Browser: Chrome 29.0.1547.57
* Database: SQLite / MySQL / postgres

Feature Requests

Feature requests are welcome. Before you submit one be sure to have:

  1. Read the Roadmap and Planned Features listing, use the GitHub search and check the feature hasn't already been requested.
  2. Take a moment to think about whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project, or if it might better fit being an app/plugin.
  3. Remember, it's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's leaders of the merits of this feature. Please provide as much detail and context as possible, this means explaining the use case and why it is likely to be common.
  4. Clearly indicate whether this is a feature request for Ghost admin, or for themes or apps.

Change Requests

Change requests cover both architectural and functional changes to how Ghost works. If you have an idea for a new or different dependency, a refactor, or an improvement to a feature, etc - please be sure to:

  1. Use the GitHub search and check someone else didn't get there first
  2. Take a moment to think about the best way to make a case for, and explain what you're thinking. Are you sure this shouldn't really be a bug report or a feature request? Is it really one idea or is it many? What's the context? What problem are you solving? Why is what you are suggesting better than what's already there? Does it fit with the Roadmap?

Submitting Pull Requests

Pull requests are awesome. If you're looking to raise a PR for something which doesn't have an open issue, please think carefully about raising an issue which your PR can close, especially if you're fixing a bug. This makes it more likely that there will be enough information available for your PR to be properly tested and merged. To make sure your PR is accepted as quickly as possible, you should be sure to have read all the guidelines on:

Need Help?

If you're not completely clear on how to submit / update / do Pull Requests, please check out our in depth Git Workflow guide for Ghost.

Testing and Quality Assurance

Never underestimate just how useful quality assurance is. If you're looking to get involved with the code base and don't know where to start, checking out and testing a pull request is one of the most useful things you could do.

If you want to get involved with testing Ghost, there is a set of QA Documentation on the wiki.

Essentially though, check out the latest master, take it for a spin, and if you find anything odd, please follow the bug report guidelines and let us know!

Checking out a Pull Request

These are some excellent instructions on configuring your GitHub repository to allow you to checkout pull requests in the same way as branches: https://gist.github.com/piscisaureus/3342247.

Documentation

Ghost's documentation can be found at support.ghost.org.

The documentation is generated using jekyll, all of the docs are on the gh-pages branch on the GitHub repository. You can clone the repo, checkout the gh-pages branch, and submit pull requests following the pull-request guidelines.

Translation

Full documentation on contributing translations can be found at http://docs.ghost.org/translations

Working on Ghost Core

Note: It is recommended that you use the Ghost-Vagrant setup for developing Ghost.

Pre-requisites:

  • Node 0.10.x
  • for running functional tests: phantomjs 1.9.x and casperjs 1.1.x (instructions)
  • for building docs: python and pygments

Installation / Setup Instructions

  1. Check you have the pre-requisites listed above!
  2. Clone the git repo
  3. cd into the project folder
  4. Run npm install -g grunt-cli - to make it possible to run grunt commands
  5. Run npm install - you need all the dependencies, so do not use the --production flag mentioned in user install guides
    • If the install fails with errors to do with "node-gyp rebuild" or "SQLite3", follow the SQLite3 install instructions below this list
    • Usually if you're within vagrant, and have installed the guest plugins and updated that, this will not happen
  6. Run grunt init from the root - updates bower dependencies, copies assets and compiles Handlebars templates
  7. If you're going to run in production mode, you also need to run grunt prod
  8. Run npm start from the root to start the server.

If something goes wrong, please see the troubleshooting tips below.

Developer Tips

Whilst developing, you can take advantage of the Grunt toolkit to automatically compile assets, such as handlebar templates, stylesheets and javascripts. Some useful commands include:

  • grunt dev => Automatically compile assets in development environment
  • grunt prod => Automatically compile assets for the production environment
  • grunt watch => Automatically compile handlebars

Addresses for development:

Updating with the latest changes

Pulling down the latest changes from master will often require more than just a pull, you may also need to do one or more of the following:

  • npm install - fetch any new dependencies
  • git submodule update - fetch the latest changes to Casper (the default theme)
  • grunt init - will fetch bower dependencies and recompile handlebars templates for the admin
  • delete content/data/*.db - delete the database and allow Ghost to recreate the fixtures

Key Branches & Tags

  • master is the bleeding edge development branch. All work on the next release is here. Do NOT use this branch for a production site.
  • stable contains the latest release of Ghost. This branch may be used in production.
  • gh-pages contains The Ghost Guide our developer documentation.

Grunt Toolkit

Ghost uses Grunt heavily to automate useful tasks such as building assets, testing, live reloading/watching etc etc

Grunt Toolkit docs are a worthwhile read for any would-be contributor.

Troubleshooting / FAQ

I get "ERROR: Failed to lookup view "index"

Sounds like you don't have our default theme - Casper, your content/themes/casper folder is probably empty. When cloning from GitHub be sure to use SSH and to run git submodule update --init.

Ghost doesn't do anything - I get a blank screen

Sounds like you probably didn't run the right grunt command for building assets. You may need to run grunt init and if using production mode, grunt prod as well.

SQLite3 doesn't install properly during npm install

Ghost depends upon SQLite3, which requires a native binary. These are provided for most major platforms, but if you are using a more obscure *nix flavor you may need to follow the node-sqlite3 binary instructions.

Contributor License Agreement

By contributing your code to Ghost you grant the Ghost Foundation a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, transferable license under all of Your relevant intellectual property rights (including copyright, patent, and any other rights), to use, copy, prepare derivative works of, distribute and publicly perform and display the Contributions on any licensing terms, including without limitation: (a) open source licenses like the MIT license; and (b) binary, proprietary, or commercial licenses. Except for the licenses granted herein, You reserve all right, title, and interest in and to the Contribution.

You confirm that you are able to grant us these rights. You represent that You are legally entitled to grant the above license. If Your employer has rights to intellectual property that You create, You represent that You have received permission to make the Contributions on behalf of that employer, or that Your employer has waived such rights for the Contributions.

You represent that the Contributions are Your original works of authorship, and to Your knowledge, no other person claims, or has the right to claim, any right in any invention or patent related to the Contributions. You also represent that You are not legally obligated, whether by entering into an agreement or otherwise, in any way that conflicts with the terms of this license.

The Ghost Foundation acknowledges that, except as explicitly described in this Agreement, any Contribution which you provide is on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.