Contribution Guidelines for GitHub
General Contributions to FreeBSD
Please read the guidelines in Contributing to FreeBSD for all the ways you can contribute to the project, how the project is organized, how to build different parts of the project, etc. The developer's handbook is another useful resource.
FreeBSD accepts source code contributions using one of several methods:
A GitHub pull request
A code review in Phabricator
An attachment on a Bugzilla ticket
Direct access to the Git repository
The preferred method depends on a few factors including the size or scope of the change. GitHub pull requests are preferred for relatively straightforward changes where the contributor already has a GitHub account.
A change should be submitted by only one method. For example, please do not open a GitHub pull request and create a Phabricator review for the same change (unless explicitly requested to do so by a FreeBSD committer).
GitHub Pull Requests
Presently, GitHub 'freebsd-src' repository is one of the publish-only services for the FreeBSD 'src' repository the project uses to promote collaboration and contribution. Pull requests that need little developer time, are generally small, and have limited scope should be submitted. Do not submit pull requests that are security-related, problem reports, works in progress, changes that are controversial and need discussion, or changes that require specialized review.
A pull request will be considered if:
The request is substantive in nature. We generally don't accept minor or cosmetic changes unless they are part of larger work in that area. Pull requests should solve a real, actual problem.
It is ready or nearly ready to be committed. A committer should be able to land the pull request with less than 10 minutes of additional work.
It passes all the GitHub CI jobs.
You can respond to feedback quickly. If feedback is requested and one month passes without a response we may close the pull request.
It touches fewer than about 10 files and the changes are less than about 200 lines. Changes larger than this may be OK, or you may be asked to submit multiple pull requests of a more manageable size.
Each logical change is a separate commit within the pull request. Commit messages for each change should follow the commit log message guide.
All commits have, as the author, your name and valid email address as you would like to see them in the FreeBSD repository. Fake github.com addresses cannot be used. But see [Author Name and Email][#author-name-and-email] for details.
The scope of the pull request should not change during review. If the review suggests changes that expand the scope, please create an independent pull request.
Fixup commits should be squashed with the commit they are fixing. Each commit in your branch should be suitable for FreeBSD's repository.
Commits should include one or more
Signed-off-by:lines with name and email address certifying Developer Certificate of Origin. But see [Author Name and Email][#author-name-and-email] for details.The commits follow FreeBSD's style guide. See Style.
Run tools/build/checkstyle9.pl on your Git branch and eliminate all errors, or provide an explanation for exceptions.
The commits do not introduce trailing white space.
If the commit fixes a bug, please add 'PR: <bugnumber>' to the commit message to document the Bugzilla Problem Report number.
If there's a code review related to this change, please include its URL in the commit message. However, where possible, please do not open both a differential review and a GitHub pull request.
If you have run FreeBSD's sources through a static analysis tool, please don't submit the raw results. Please also see the chunking up guidelines. Also, please make sure that kyua tests are the same before / after your change. Ideally, you'd also create a test case that shows an actual bug that's being fixed by these changes.
FreeBSD committers submitting pull requests are responsible for pushing them into the tree (possibly with approval if cross-repo commit bit policy needs it). Pull requests by FreeBSD committers will be closed after a month unless there's a very good reason not to.
Submissions using generative AI will be rejected.
Submissions from AI chatbots will result in the account being banned.
When revising your pull request after feedback, please rebase with a forced push rather than a merge commit.
More complex changes may be submitted as pull requests, but they may be closed if they are too large, too unwieldy, become inactive, need further discussion in the community, or need extensive revision.
Please avoid creating large, wide-ranging cleanup patches: they often lack the focus needed for a good review and can be hard to test. Misdirected patches may be redirected to a more appropriate forum for the patch to be resolved.
Please make sure that your submissions compile and work before submitting. If you need feedback, a pull request might not be the right place. A pull request may be closed if there are too many obvious mistakes, or when a time-consuming rework is needed.
If you want to cleanup style or older coding conventions in preparation for some other commit, please go ahead and prepare those patches. However, please avoid just cleaning up to make it cleaner, unless there's a clear advantage to doing so. While the project strives to have a uniform coding style, our style offers a range of choices making some 'cleanups' ambiguous at best. Also, some files have their own consistent style that deviates from style(9). Style changes take time to process, but our volunteers have limited time, so please be respectful of their time. Trivial spelling changes take this valuable time, but rerturn little benefit relative to other changes.
The current theory for pull requests on GitHub is to facilitate inclusion in the project. The guidelines are streamlined for quick decisions about each pull request. Unless explicitly stated, rejection here as "not ready" or "too large" does not mean the project is uninterested in the work, it just means the submission does not meet the limited scope for pull requests accepted here. Sometimes it is easier to review a GitHub pull request than to do the review in Phabricator, so that's also allowed.
Finally, if we close a pull request because it's not ready yet, or stalled out, please don't give up. You can resubmit them later once you have time to finish the work, or to have them reconsidered if you think we've made an error in closing it.
Author Name and Email
Please use a name and email address in the Signed-off-by trailer and as the author of the git commits, since we cannot accept anonymous contributions. It is common, but not required, to use some form of your full name. We realize that some contributors are not comfortable doing so or prefer to contribute under a pseudonym, preferred name, chosen name or similar moniker that might not match relevant government records. We can accept your patch, as long as the name and email you use are distinctive, identifying, and not misleading. Please note that if your patch is accepted, the name and email address will become a permanent and immutable part of the public history of the FreeBSD source tree.
The goal of this policy is to allow us to have sufficient information to contact you if questions arise about your contribution. Addresses of the form [email protected] do not meet this standard since we cannot use it to contact you. We can use .mailmap for name or email changes and mistakes, but is imperfect.
Core ([email protected]) may request authors of significant changes using an obvious pseudonym to document their identity more concretely should there be issues in the future. The author may request this documentation be kept confidential unless needed for legal issues arising from their contributions.
Style
Avoid adding trailing newlines and whitespace. These slow down the integration process and are a distraction. git diff will highlight them in red, as will the Files Changed tab in the pull request.
For C programs, see style(9) for details. You can use Clang format with the top level .clang-format file if you are unsure. The git clang-format command can help minimize churn by only formatting the areas nearby the changes. While not perfect, using these tools will maximize your chances of not having style comments on your pull requests.
For Lua, see style.lua(9) for details. Lua is used for the boot loader and a few scripts in the base system.
For Makefiles changes, see style.Makefile(5) for details. FreeBSD's base system uses the in-tree make, not GNU Make, so make(1) is another useful resource.
For manual page changes, see style.mdoc(5) for details. Changes should pass mandoc -Tlint and igor (install the latter with pkg install igor). Please be sure to observe the one-sentence-per-line rule so manual pages properly render. Proposed changes to manual pages should not bump the document date until merged.
For shell scripts, avoid using bash. The system shell (/bin/sh) is preferred. Shell scripts in the base system cannot use bash or bash extensions not present in FreeBSD's shell.
Signed-off-by
Other projects mandate Signed-off-by to create a paper trail for contributions they receive. The Developer Certificate of Origin is an attestation that the person making the contribution can do it under the current license of the file. Other projects that have 'delegated' hierarchies also use it when maintainers integrate these patches and submit them upstream.
Right now, pull requests on GitHub are an experimental feature. We strongly suggest that people add this line. It creates a paper trail for infrequent contributors. Also, developers that are landing a pull request will use a Signed-off-by line to set the author for the commit.
These lines are easy to add with git commit -s.
Submitting as part of class work
If you are a professor or teacher that wishes to have your students submit fixes as part of their class work, please contact [email protected] before the semester to ensure we allocate the proper resources to process them quickly. We'll give you more details when you contact us and thanks for including FreeBSD in your class work. It also helps us keep track.
FreeBSD's Upstreams
Anything that's in the directory contrib, crypto, sys/contrib, sys/crypto/ or sys/cddl likely has an upstream we pull from. Please do a git log --merges in any subdirectory of these you are submitting patches for to find out the last time we merged from upstream. If it is in the last 5 years, upstream is "active" and you should submit your patches there and let the last few people to commit to this file (especially merge commits) know. If it's been more than 5 years, upstream is likely inactive so please submit the patch. We can sort out if it should go into FreeBSD or upstream.