Contributing to Spring Initializr

Spring Initializr is released under the Apache 2.0 license. If you would like to contribute something, or simply want to hack on the code this document should help you get started.

This project adheres to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to spring-code-of-conduct@pivotal.io.

We use GitHub issues to track bugs and enhancements. If you have a general usage question please ask on Stack Overflow or join us on the Gitter channel.

All commits must include a Signed-off-by trailer at the end of each commit message to indicate that the contributor agrees to the Developer Certificate of Origin. For additional details, please refer to the blog post Hello DCO, Goodbye CLA: Simplifying Contributions to Spring.

None of these is essential for a pull request, but they will all help. They can also be added after the original pull request but before a merge.

• We use the Spring JavaFormat project to apply code formatting conventions. A plugin is available for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. You can also format the code from the Maven build by running ./mvnw io.spring.javaformat:spring-javaformat-maven-plugin:apply.

• The build includes checkstyle rules for many of our code conventions. Run ./mvnw validate if you want to check you changes are compliant.

• Make sure all new .java files to have a simple Javadoc class comment with at least an @author tag identifying you, and preferably at least a paragraph on what the class is for.

• Add the ASF license header comment to all new .java files (copy from existing files in the project)

• Add yourself as an @author to the .java files that you modify substantially (more than cosmetic changes).

• Add some Javadocs and, if you change the namespace, some XSD doc elements.

• A few unit tests would help a lot as well — someone has to do it.

• If no-one else is using your branch, please rebase it against the current main (or other target branch in the original project).

• When writing a commit message please follow these conventions, if you are fixing an existing issue please add Fixes gh-XXXX at the end of the commit message (where XXXX is the issue number).

Building from Source

$ ./mvnw clean install