Contributing changes

This guide shows you how to contribute a change to Launchpad.

Discuss the change

To begin with, it is usually helpful to discuss the change you’d like to make, in a bug, in the launchpad-users, or launchpad-dev mailing lists, or on IRC (#launchpad-dev on irc.libera.chat).

Get the Launchpad source

Once you have decided on the change to be made, clone the repository.

git clone https://git.launchpad.net/launchpad

Make your changes

Create a branch from a reasonable point, such as master.

git checkout -b my-change

Make your changes on the branch. Be sure to test them locally by setting up a local Launchpad development instance.

Run the pre-commit hook

If you followed the instructions to set up and run Launchpad, you should already have pre-commit installed and have the pre-commit git hook installed. If not, complete these steps before proceeding.

Push your changes

Once you are happy with your changes, stage and commit them, and then push to a personal repository.

Next, you need to share your changes with the Launchpad maintainers, but you probably don’t have permissions to push to the master branch of the Launchpad codebase. To share your changes with the Launchpad maintainers, you need to push your commit to a personal git repository.

Create a merge proposal

Once your commit has been pushed to a personal git repository, you can follow the direct link in the post-push message to create a merge proposal. Alternatively, in a web browser, visit

https://code.launchpad.net/~<username>/+git

Remember to replace your username in the URL.

Navigate to the personal repository to which you pushed your changes, and then to the branch containing your commit.

Select Propose for merging, provide a reasonable commit message, and description of your changes.

What comes next?

Once you have created a merge proposal, a Launchpad maintainer will inspect your commit and approve or reject the changes. There may be a comments that require you to make amendments to your proposed changes, which you can do by repeating this workflow. However, once your changes are approved, your changes will be merged into the master branch of the Launchpad code base!