Contributing to Vimwiki

Filing a bug

Before filing a bug or starting to write a patch, check the latest development version from https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki/tree/dev to see if your problem is already fixed.

Issues can be filed at https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki/issues/ .

Creating a pull request

If you want to provide a pull request on GitHub, please start from the dev branch, not from the master branch. (Caution, GitHub shows master as the default branch from which to start a PR.)

Make sure to update doc/vimwiki.txt with the following information:

Update the changelog to include information on the new feature the PR introduces or the bug it is fixing.
Add a help section to describe any new features or options.
If you are a first time contributor add your name to the list of contributors.

Testing: Vimwiki uses vader for unit tests and vint for linting. Any new PRs must add new tests and pass all linter checks. See the test README for more info.

In addition to the included tests, there are more example wikis that can be used for testing here.

More info and advice for (aspiring) core developers

Before implementing a non-trivial feature, think twice what it means for the user. We should always try to keep backward compatibility. If you are not sure, discuss it on GitHub.
Also, when thinking about adding a new feature, it should be something which fits into the overall design of Vimwiki and which a significant portion of the users may like. Keep in mind that everybody has their own way to use Vimwiki.
Keep the coding style consistent.
Test your changes. Keep in mind that Vim has a ton of options and the users tons of different setups. Take a little time to think about under which circumstances your changes could break.

Git branching model

There are two branches with eternal lifetime:
1. dev: This is where the main development happens. Tasks which are done in one or only a few commits go here directly. Always try to keep this branch in a working state, that is, if the task you work on requires multiple commits, make sure intermediate commits don't make Vimwiki unusable (or at least push these commits at one go).
2. master: This branch is for released states only. Whenever a reasonable set of changes has piled up in the dev branch, a release is done. After a release, dev has been merged into master and master got exactly one additional commit in which the version number in plugin/vimwiki.vim is updated. Apart from these commits and the merge commit from dev, nothing happens on master. Never should master merge into dev. When the users ask, we should recommend this branch for them to use.
Larger changes which require multiple commits are done in feature branches. They are based on dev and merge into dev when the work is done.

Preparing a release

git checkout dev
Update the changelog in the doc, nicely grouped, with a new version number and release date.
Update the list of contributors.
Update the version number at the top of the doc file.
If necessary, update the Readme and the home page.
git checkout master && git merge dev
Update the version number at the top of plugin/vimwiki.vim.
Set a tag with the version number in Git: git tag vX.Y
git push --tags
In GitHub, go to Releases -> Draft a new release -> choose the tag, convert the changelog from the doc to markdown and post it there. Make plans to build an automatic converter and immediately forget this plan.
Tell the world.

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