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How to contribute

General

The main contact for mpv development is IRC, specifically #mpv and #mpv-devel on Libera.chat. GitHub is used for code review and long term discussions.

Sending patches

Make a GitHub pull request, or send a link to a plaintext patch created with git format-patch.
Plain diffs posted as pastebins are not acceptable! (Especially if the http link returns HTML.) They only cause extra work for everyone, because they lack commit message and authorship information.
Never send patches to any of the developers email addresses.
If your changes are not supposed to be merged immediately, mark them as "[RFC]" in the commit message or the pull request title.
Be sure to test your changes. If you didn't, please say so in the commit message and the pull request text.

Copyright of contributions

The copyright belongs to contributors. The project is a collaborative work. By sending your changes, you agree to license your contributions according to the requirements of this project.
All new code must be LGPLv2.1+ licensed, or come with the implicit agreement that it will be relicensed to LGPLv2.1+ later (see Copyright in the repository root directory).
100% compatible licenses are allowed too.
Changes in files with more liberal licenses (such as BSD, MIT, or ISC) are assumed to be dual-licensed under LGPLv2.1+ and the license indicated in the file header.
You must be either the exclusive author of the patch, or acknowledge all authors involved in the commit message. If you take 3rd party code, authorship and copyright must be properly acknowledged. If you're making changes on behalf of your employer, and the employer owns the copyright, you must mention this. If the license of the code is not LGPLv2.1+, you must mention this.
These license statements are legally binding.
Don't use fake names (something that looks like an actual name, and may be someone else's name, but is not your legal name). Using a pseudonym is allowed if it can be used to identify or contact you, even if whatever account you used to submit the patch dies.
Do not add your name to the license header. This convention is not used by this project, and neither copyright law nor any of the used licenses require it.

Write good commit messages

Write informative commit messages. Use present tense to describe the situation with the patch applied, and past tense for the situation before the change.
The subject line (the first line in a commit message) must contain a prefix identifying the sub system, followed by a short description what impact this commit has. This subject line and the commit message body must not be longer than 72 characters per line, because it messes up the output of many git tools otherwise.

For example, you fixed a crash in af_volume.c:
- Bad: fixed the bug (wtf?)
- Good: af_volume: fix crash due to null pointer access
Having a prefix gives context, and is especially useful when trying to find a specific change by looking at the history, or when running git blame.

Sample prefixes: vo_gpu: ..., command: ..., DOCS/input: ..., TOOLS/osxbundle: ..., osc.lua: ..., etc. You can always check the git log for commits which modify specific files to see which prefixes are used.
The first word after the : is lower case.
Don't end the subject line with a ..
Put an empty line between the subject line and the commit message. If this is missing, it will break display in common git tools.
The body of the commit message (everything else after the subject line) must be as informative as possible and contain everything that isn't obvious. Don't hesitate to dump as much information as you can - it doesn't cost you anything. Put some effort into it. If someone finds a bug months or years later, and finds that it's caused by your commit (even though your commit was supposed to fix another bug), it would be bad if there wasn't enough information to test the original bug. The old bug might be reintroduced while fixing the new bug.

The commit message must be wrapped on 72 characters per line, because git tools usually do not break text automatically. On the other hand, you do not need to break text that would be unnatural to break (like data for test cases, or long URLs).
Another summary of good conventions: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

Split changes into multiple commits

Follow git good practices, and split independent changes into several commits. It's usually OK to put them into a single pull request.
Try to separate cosmetic and functional changes. It's ok to make a few additional cosmetic changes in the same file you're working on. But don't do something like reformatting a whole file, and hiding an actual functional change in the same commit.
Splitting changes does not mean that you should make them as fine-grained as possible. Commits should form logical steps in development. The way you split changes is important for code review and analyzing bugs.

Always squash fixup commits when making changes to pull requests

If you make fixup commits to your pull request, you should generally squash them with "git rebase -i". We prefer to have pull requests in a merge ready state.
We don't squash-merge (nor do we use GitHub's feature that does this) because pull requests with multiple commits are perfectly legitimate, and the only thing that makes sense in non-trivial cases.
With complex pull requests, it may make sense to keep them separate, but they should be clearly marked as such. Reviewing commits is generally easier with fixups squashed.
Reviewers are encouraged to look at individual commits instead of GitHub's "changes from all commits" view (which just encourages bad git and review practices).

Touching user-visible parts may require updating the mpv docs

Most user-visible things are normally documented in DOCS/man/. If your commit touches documented behavior, list of sub-options, etc., you need to adjust the documentation.
These changes usually go into the same commit that changes the code.
Changes to command line options (addition/modification/removal) must be documented in options.rst.
Changes to input properties or input commands must be documented in input.rst.
Changes to the libmpv API must be reflected in the libmpv's headers doxygen, and in client-api-changes.rst.

Interface change policy

All incompatible changes to the user interface (options, properties, commands) must be documented by making a new text file with a txt extension containing a small note in the DOCS/interface-changes directory.
The name of the file should be brief and related to the commit that makes the change. The content of the file should begin with the type of the change (add, remove, deprecate, change, rename, etc.). If the file contains multiple changes, the change which causes the most serious compatibility issues should be placed first.
Grouping multiple related changes in the same file is also OK. Just be sure to put each separate change on a different line.
Documenting additions in DOCS/interface-changes is optional but encouraged.
interface-changes.rst is never directly updated except when making new major releases.
See DOCS/interface-changes/example.txt for an example.

Code formatting

mpv uses C11 with K&R formatting, with some exceptions.

Use the K&R indent style.
Use 4 spaces of indentation, never use tabs (except in Makefiles).
Add a single space between keywords and binary operators. There are some other cases where spaces must be added. Example:
```
if ((a * b) > c) {
    // code
    some_function(a, b, c);
}
```
Break lines on 80 columns. There is a hard limit of 100 columns. You may ignore this limit if there's a strong case that not breaking the line will increase readability. Going over 100 columns might provoke endless discussions about whether such a limit is needed or not, so avoid it.

If the body of an if/for/while statement has more than 1 physical lines, then always add braces, even if they're technically redundant.

Bad:

if (a)
    // do something if b
    if (b)
        do_something();

Good:

if (a) {
    // do something if b
    if (b)
        do_something();
}

If the if has an else branch, both branches must use braces, even if they're technically redundant.

Example:
```
if (a) {
    one_line();
} else {
    one_other_line();
}
```
If an if condition spans multiple physical lines, then put the opening brace for the if body on the next physical line. (Also, preferably always add a brace, even if technically none is needed.)

Example:
```
if (very_long_condition_a &&
    very_long_condition_b)
{
    code();
} else {
    ...
}
```
(If the if body is simple enough, this rule can be skipped.)
Remove any trailing whitespace.
Do not make stray whitespaces changes.

Header #include statement order

The order of #include statements in the source code is not very consistent. New code must follow the following conventions:

Put standard includes (#include <stdlib.h> etc.) on the top,
then after a blank line, add library includes (#include <zlib.h> etc.)
then after a blank line, add internal includes (#include "player/core.h")
sort them alphabetically within these sections

General coding

Use C11. Also freely make use of C11 features if it's appropriate, but do not use VLA and complex number types.
Don't use non-standard language (such as GNU C-only features). In some cases they may be warranted, if they are optional (such as attributes enabling printf-like format string checks). "#pragma once" is allowed as an exception. But in general, standard C11 must be used.
The same applies to libc functions. We have to be Windows-compatible too. Use functions guaranteed by C11 or POSIX only, unless your use is guarded by a configure check. Be mindful of MinGW-specifics since C11 support is not always guaranteed.
Prefer fusing declaration and initialization, rather than putting declarations on the top of a block. Obvious data flow is more important than avoiding mixing declarations and statements, which is just a C90 artifact.
If you add features that require intrusive changes, discuss them on the dev channel first. There might be a better way to add a feature and it can avoid wasted work.

Code of Conduct

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms. The Contributor Code of Conduct can be found here: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/0/code_of_conduct/

Rules for git push access

Push access to the main git repository is handed out on an arbitrary basis. If you got access, the following rules must be followed:

You are expected to follow the general development rules as outlined in this whole document.
You must be present on the IRC dev channel when you push something.
Anyone can push small fixes: typo corrections, small/obvious/uncontroversial bug fixes, edits to the user documentation or code comments, and so on.
You can freely make changes to parts of the code which you maintain. For larger changes, it's recommended to let others review the changes first.
You automatically maintain code if you wrote or modified most of it before (e.g. you made larger changes to it before, did partial or full rewrites, did major bug fixes, or you're the original author of the code). If there is more than one maintainer, you may need to come to an agreement with the others how to handle this to avoid conflict.
If you make a pull requests (especially if it's to code you maintain), and you want reviews, explicitly ping the people from which you expect reviews.
As a maintainer, you can approve pull requests by others to "your" code.
If you approve or merge 3rd party changes, make sure they follow the general development rules.
Changes to user interface and public API must always be approved by the project leader.
Seasoned project members are allowed to revert commits that broke the build, or broke basic functionality in a catastrophic way, and the developer who broke it is unavailable. (Depending on severity.)
Adhere to the CoC.
The project leader is not bound by these rules.

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