Contributing to LibVLCSharp

We'd love for you to contribute to our source code and to make LibVLCSharp even better than it is today! Here are the guidelines we'd like you to follow:

• Code of Conduct
• Question or Problem?
• Issues and Bugs
• Feature Requests
• Submission Guidelines
• Coding Rules

Got a Question or Problem?

If you have questions about how to use LibVLCSharp, please direct these to StackOverflow. The project maintainers hang out on Discord.

Found an Issue?

If you find a bug in the source code or a mistake in the documentation, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitLab Repository. Even better you can submit a Pull Request with a fix.

Please see the Submission Guidelines below.

Want a Feature?

You can request a new feature by submitting an issue to our GitLab Repository. If you would like to implement a new feature then consider what kind of change it is:

• Major Changes that you wish to contribute to the project should be discussed first on Discord so that we can better coordinate our efforts, prevent duplication of work, and help you to craft the change so that it is successfully accepted into the project.
• Small Changes can be crafted and submitted to the GitLab or GitHub Repository as a Pull Request.

Submission Guidelines

Submitting an Issue

If your issue appears to be a bug, and hasn't been reported, open a new issue. Help us to maximize the effort we can spend fixing issues and adding new features, by not reporting duplicate issues.

Providing the following information will increase the chances of your issue being dealt with quickly:

• Overview of the Issue - if an error is being thrown a stack trace helps
• Motivation for or Use Case - explain why this is a bug for you
• LibVLCSharp/LibVLC Version(s) - is it a regression?
• Operating System - is this a problem with all platforms or only specific ones?
• Reproduce the Error - provide a example or an unambiguous set of steps.
• Related Issues - has a similar issue been reported before?
• Suggest a Fix - if you can't fix the bug yourself, perhaps you can point to what might be causing the problem (line of code or commit)

If you get help, help others. Good karma rulez!

Submitting a Pull Request

Before you submit your pull request consider the following guidelines:

• Search GitLab or GitHub for an open or closed Pull Request that relates to your submission. You don't want to duplicate effort.

• Make your changes in a new git branch:

  git checkout -b my-fix-branch develop
  

• Create your patch, including appropriate test cases.

• Follow our Coding Rules.

• Run the test suite, as described below.

• Commit your changes using a descriptive commit message.

  git commit -a
  

  Note: the optional commit -a command line option will automatically "add" and "rm" edited files.

• Make sure you use a distinctive commit author name.

• Push your branch to GitHub:

  git push origin my-fix-branch
  

In GitHub, send a pull request to libvlcsharp:3.x.

If we suggest changes, then:

• Make the required updates.
• Re-run the test suite to ensure tests are still passing.
• Commit your changes to your branch (e.g. my-fix-branch).
• Push the changes to your GitHub repository (this will update your Pull Request).

If the PR gets too outdated we may ask you to rebase and force push to update the PR:

git rebase target_branch -i
git push origin my-fix-branch -f

That's it! Thank you for your contribution!

After your pull request is merged

After your pull request is merged, you can safely delete your branch and pull the changes from the main (upstream) repository:

• Delete the remote branch on GitHub either through the GitHub web UI or your local shell as follows:

  git push origin --delete my-fix-branch
  

• Check out the master branch:

  git checkout master -f
  

• Delete the local branch:

  git branch -D my-fix-branch
  

• Update your master with the latest upstream version:

  git pull --ff upstream master
  

Coding

Developer Environment

The latest .NET 6 SDK is required.

• Visual Studio 2022 (with latest patches/updates), with the following workloads/components
  • .NET desktop development workload
  • Mobile development with .NET workload and Android/iOS SDKs
  • .NET Core cross-platform development
  • Developer packs for .NET Framework 4.7 and 4.7.1

You will need to install GTK if you want to work on LibVLCSharp.GTK.

If you want to get started on Windows with minimal configuration requirements, open LibVLCSharp.Win32.sln.

Coding Rules

To ensure consistency throughout the source code, keep these rules in mind as you are working:

• All features or bug fixes must be tested by one or more unit tests (if possible and applicable).
• All public API methods must be documented with XML documentation.