As an open-source project, we welcome and encourage the community to submit patches directly to the project. In our collaborative open source environment, standards and methods for submitting changes help reduce the chaos that can result from an active development community.
This document explains how to participate in project conversations, log bugs and enhancement requests, and submit patches to the project so your patch will be accepted quickly in the codebase.
Licensing is very important to open source projects. It helps ensure the software continues to be available under the terms that the author desired.
Zephyr uses the Apache 2.0 license (as found in the LICENSE file in the project's GitHub repo) to strike a balance between open contribution and allowing you to use the software however you would like to. The Apache 2.0 license is a permisive open source license that allows you to freely use, modify, distribute and sell your own products that include Apache 2.0 licensed software. (For more information about this, check out articles such as Why choose Apache 2.0 licensing and Top 10 Apache License Questions Answered).
A license tells you what rights you have as a developer, as provided by the copyright holder. It is important that the contributor fully understands the licensing rights and agrees to them. Sometimes the copyright holder isn't the contributor, such as when the contributor is doing work on behalf of a company.
There are some imported or reused components of the Zephyr project that use other licensing, as described in Zephyr Licensing.
Importing code into the Zephyr OS from other projects that use a license other than the Apache 2.0 license needs to be fully understood in context and approved by the Zephyr governing board.
By carefully reviewing potential contributions and also enforcing a :ref:`DCO` for contributed code, we can ensure that the Zephyr community can develop products with the Zephyr Project without concerns over patent or copyright issues.
See Contributing non-Apache 2.0 components for more information about this contributing and review process for imported components.
To make a good faith effort to ensure licensing criteria are met, the Zephyr project requires the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) process to be followed.
The DCO is an attestation attached to every contribution made by every
developer. In the commit message of the contribution, (described more fully
later in this document), the developer simply adds a Signed-off-by
statement and thereby agrees to the DCO.
When a developer submits a patch, it is a commitment that the contributor has the right to submit the patch per the license. The DCO agreement is shown below and at http://developercertificate.org/.
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
have the right to submit it under the open source license
indicated in the file; or
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the
best of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open
source license and I have the right under that license to
submit that work with modifications, whether created in whole
or in part by me, under the same open source license (unless
I am permitted to submit under a different license), as
Indicated in the file; or
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
it.
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
are public and that a record of the contribution (including
all personal information I submit with it, including my
sign-off) is maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed
consistent with this project or the open source license(s)
involved.
The DCO requires a sign-off message in the following format appear on each commit in the pull request:
Signed-off-by: Zephyrus Zephyr <[email protected]>
The DCO text can either be manually added to your commit body, or you can add
either -s or --signoff to your usual Git commit commands. If you forget
to add the sign-off you can also amend a previous commit with the sign-off by
running git commit --amend -s. If you've pushed your changes to GitHub
already you'll need to force push your branch after this with git push -f.
As a contributor, you'll want to be familiar with the Zephyr project, how to configure, install, and use it as explained in the Zephyr Project website and how to set up your development environment as introduced in the Zephyr Getting Started Guide.
The examples below use a Linux host environment for Zephyr development. You should be familiar with common developer tools such as Git and CMake, and platforms such as GitHub.
If you haven't already done so, you'll need to create a (free) GitHub account on http://github.com and have Git tools available on your development system.
To clone the main Zephyr Project repository use:
$ git clone https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr
The Zephyr project directory structure is described in Source Tree Structure documentation. In addition to the Zephyr kernel itself, you'll also find the sources for technical documentation, sample code, supported board configurations, and a collection of subsystem tests. All of these are available for developers to contribute to and enhance.
Before starting on a patch, first check in our issues Zephyr Project Issues system to see what's been reported on the issue you'd like to address. Have a conversation on the Zephyr-devel mailing list (or the #zephyrproject IRC channel on freenode.net) to see what others think of your issue (and proposed solution). You may find others that have encountered the issue you're finding, or that have similar ideas for changes or additions. Send a message to the Zephyr-devel mailing list to introduce and discuss your idea with the development community.
Please note that it's common practice on IRC to be away from the channel, but still have a client logged in to receive traffic. If you ask a question to a particular person and they don't answer, try to stay signed in to the channel if you can, so they have time to respond to you. This is especially important given the many different timezones Zephyr developers live in. If you don't get a timely response on IRC, try sending a message to the mailing list instead.
It's always a good practice to search for existing or related issues before submitting your own. When you submit an issue (bug or feature request), the triage team will review and comment on the submission, typically within a few business days.
You can find all open pull requests on GitHub and open Zephyr Project Issues in Github issues.
The name in the commit message Signed-off-by: line and your email must
match the change authorship information. Make sure your .git/config is set
up correctly:
$ git config --global user.name "David Developer" $ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
When you submit a pull request to the project, a series of checks are performed to verify your commit messages meet the requirements. The same step done during the CI process can be performed locally using the the gitlint command.
Install gitlint and run it locally in your tree and branch where your patches have been committed:
$ sudo pip3 install gitlint $ gitlint
Note, gitlint only checks HEAD (the most recent commit), so you should run it
after each commit, or use the --commits option to specify a commit range
covering all the development patches to be submitted.
To verify that your changes did not break any tests or samples, please run the
sanitycheck script locally before submitting your pull request to GitHub. To
run the same tests the CI system runs, follow these steps from within your
local Zephyr source working directory:
$ source zephyr-env.sh $ ./scripts/sanitycheck
The above will execute the basic sanitycheck script, which will run various kernel tests using the QEMU emulator. It will also do some build tests on various samples with advanced features that can't run in QEMU.
We highly recommend you run these tests locally to avoid any CI failures.
Use these coding guidelines to ensure that your development complies with the project's style and naming conventions.
In general, follow the Linux kernel coding style, with the following exceptions:
- Add braces to every
ifandelsebody, even for single-line code blocks. Use the--ignore BRACESflag to make checkpatch stop complaining. - Use spaces instead of tabs to align comments after declarations, as needed.
- Use C89-style single line comments,
/* */. The C99-style single line comment,//, is not allowed. - Use
/** */for doxygen comments that need to appear in the documentation.
The Linux kernel GPL-licensed tool checkpatch is used to check
coding style conformity. Checkpatch is available in the scripts
directory. To invoke it when committing code, make the file
$ZEPHYR_BASE/.git/hooks/pre-commit executable and edit it to contain:
#!/bin/sh
set -e exec
exec git diff --cached | ${ZEPHYR_BASE}/scripts/checkpatch.pl -One general practice we encourage, is to make small, controlled changes. This practice simplifies review, makes merging and rebasing easier, and keeps the change history clear and clean.
When contributing to the Zephyr Project, it is also important you provide as much information as you can about your change, update appropriate documentation, and test your changes thoroughly before submitting.
The general GitHub workflow used by Zephyr developers uses a combination of command line Git commands and browser interaction with GitHub. As it is with Git, there are multiple ways of getting a task done. We'll describe a typical workflow here:
Create a Fork of Zephyr to your personal account on GitHub. (Click on the fork button in the top right corner of the Zephyr project repo page in GitHub.)
On your development computer, clone the fork you just made:
$ git clone https://github.com/<your github id>/zephyr
This would be a good time to let Git know about the upstream repo too:
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr.git
and verify the remote repos:
$ git remote -v
Create a topic branch (off of master) for your work (if you're addressing an issue, we suggest including the issue number in the branch name):
$ git checkout master $ git checkout -b fix_comment_typo
Some Zephyr subsystems do development work on a separate branch from master so you may need to indicate this in your checkout:
$ git checkout -b fix_out_of_date_patch origin/net
Make changes, test locally, change, test, test again, ... (Check out the prior chapter on sanitycheck as well).
When things look good, start the pull request process by adding your changed files:
$ git add [file(s) that changed, add -p if you want to be more specific]
You can see files that are not yet staged using:
$ git status
Verify changes to be committed look as you expected:
$ git diff --cached
Commit your changes to your local repo:
$ git commit -s
The
-soption automatically adds yourSigned-off-by:to your commit message. Your commit will be rejected without this line that indicates your agreement with the DCO. See the Commit Guidelines section for specific guidelines for writing your commit messages.Push your topic branch with your changes to your fork in your personal GitHub account:
$ git push origin fix_comment_typo
In your web browser, go to your forked repo and click on the
Compare & pull requestbutton for the branch you just worked on and you want to open a pull request with.Review the pull request changes, and verify that you are opening a pull request for the appropriate branch. The title and message from your commit message should appear as well.
If you're working on a subsystem branch that's not
master, you may need to change the intended branch for the pull request here, for example, by changing the base branch frommastertonet.GitHub will assign one or more suggested reviewers (based on the CODEOWNERS file in the repo). If you are a project member, you can select additional reviewers now too.
Click on the submit button and your pull request is sent and awaits review. Email will be sent as review comments are made, or you can check on your pull request at https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pulls.
While you're waiting for your pull request to be accepted and merged, you can create another branch to work on another issue. (Be sure to make your new branch off of master and not the previous branch.):
$ git checkout master $ git checkout -b fix_another_issue
and use the same process described above to work on this new topic branch.
If reviewers do request changes to your patch, you can interactively rebase commit(s) to fix review issues. In your development repo:
$ git fetch --all $ git rebase --ignore-whitespace upstream/master
The
--ignore-whitespaceoption stopsgit apply(called by rebase) from changing any whitespace. Continuing:$ git rebase -i <offending-commit-id>^
In the interactive rebase editor, replace
pickwitheditto select a specific commit (if there's more than one in your pull request), or remove the line to delete a commit entirely. Then edit files to fix the issues in the review.As before, inspect and test your changes. When ready, continue the patch submission:
$ git add [file(s)] $ git rebase --continue
Update commit comment if needed, and continue:
$ git push --force origin fix_comment_typo
By force pushing your update, your original pull request will be updated with your changes so you won't need to resubmit the pull request.
Changes are submitted as Git commits. Each commit message must contain:
A short and descriptive subject line that is less than 72 characters, followed by a blank line. The subject line must include a prefix that identifies the subsystem being changed, followed by a colon, and a short title, for example:
doc: update wiki references to new site. (If you're updating an existing file, you can usegit log <filename>to see what developers used as the prefix for previous patches of this file.)A change description with your logic or reasoning for the changes, followed by a blank line.
A Signed-off-by line,
Signed-off-by: <name> <email>typically added automatically by usinggit commit -sIf the change addresses an issue, include a line of the form:
Fixes #<issue number>.
All changes and topics sent to GitHub must be well-formed, as described above.
When editing the commit message, please briefly explain what your change
does and why it's needed. A change summary of "Fixes stuff" will be rejected. An
empty change summary is only acceptable for trivial changes fully described by
the commit title (e.g., doc: fix misspellings in CONTRIBUTING doc)
The description body of the commit message must include:
- what the change does,
- why you chose that approach,
- what assumptions were made, and
- how you know it works -- for example, which tests you ran.
For examples of accepted commit messages, you can refer to the Zephyr GitHub changelog.
- Commits must build cleanly when applied on top of each other, thus avoiding breaking bisectability.
- Commits must pass the scripts/checkpatch.pl requirements.
- Each commit must address a single identifiable issue and must be logically self-contained. Unrelated changes should be submitted as separate commits.
- You may submit pull request RFCs (requests for comments) to send work proposals, progress snapshots of your work, or to get early feedback on features or changes that will affect multiple areas in the code base.
When adding a new file to the tree, it is important to detail the source of origin on the file, provide attributions, and detail the intended usage. In cases where the file is an original to Zephyr, the commit message should include the following ("Original" is the assumption if no Origin tag is present):
Origin: Original
In cases where the file is imported from an external project, the commit message shall contain details regarding the original project, the location of the project, the SHA-id of the origin commit for the file, the intended purpose, and if the file will be maintained by the Zephyr project, (whether or not the Zephyr project will contain a localized branch or if it is a downstream copy).
For example, a copy of a locally maintained import:
Origin: Contiki OS License: BSD 3-Clause URL: http://www.contiki-os.org/ commit: 853207acfdc6549b10eb3e44504b1a75ae1ad63a Purpose: Introduction of networking stack. Maintained-by: Zephyr
For example, a copy of an externally maintained import:
Origin: Tiny Crypt License: BSD 3-Clause URL: https://github.com/01org/tinycrypt commit: 08ded7f21529c39e5133688ffb93a9d0c94e5c6e Purpose: Introduction of TinyCrypt Maintained-by: External