Contributor Guidance

Contributor Guidance

Use this page to understand contribution expectations before you begin environment setup.

For setup and local workflows, see Developer Setup.

What to know before setup

• Contributions should be tied to a planned issue or an agreed backlog item whenever possible.
• Scope one pull request to one fix or feature whenever practical.
• Avoid direct messaging to solicit reviews or merges.
• Keep commit history readable and focused.

DCO and commit sign-off

• Sign off all commits (Signed-off-by) in your feature or fix branch.
• Ensure DCO checks pass before requesting merge.

Testing expectations for contributions

• Run relevant local validation before requesting review.
• Maintain unit test coverage above 90% line coverage.
• Include or update tests for behavior changes.
• If CI checks fail and you cannot resolve a failure, document it clearly in the pull request.

For test setup and execution details (E2E, integration, and Theia regression), see Testing Setup and Execution.

Refactoring guidance

The codebase is moving toward a more maintainable object-oriented structure.

• Prefer class and method based implementations.
• Avoid adding new logic as standalone functions in extension.ts and *Actions.ts files when class-based patterns exist.
• Keep refactors incremental and tightly scoped so review remains manageable.

References

• Typescript Coding Standards