| # Contributing Guidelines | |
| [](http://ipn.io) | |
| [](https://libp2p.io/) | |
| Welcome to the rust-libp2p contribution guide! We appreciate your interest in improving our library. | |
| ## Looking for ways to contribute? | |
| There are several ways you can contribute to rust-libp2p: | |
| - Start contributing immediately via the opened [help wanted](https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22help+wanted%22) or [difficulty:easy](https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Adifficulty%3Aeasy) issues on GitHub. | |
| These issues are suitable for newcomers and provide an excellent starting point. | |
| - Reporting issues, bugs, mistakes, or inconsistencies. | |
| As many open source projects, we are short-staffed, we thus kindly ask you to be open to contribute a fix for discovered issues. | |
| ### We squash-merge pull Requests | |
| We always squash merge submitted pull requests. | |
| This means that we discourage force pushes, in order to make the diff between pushes easier for us to review. | |
| Squash merging allows us to maintain a clean and organized commit history. | |
| The PR title, which will become the commit message after the squashing process, should follow [conventional commit spec](https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/). | |
| ### Write changelog entries for user-facing changes | |
| When making user-facing changes, it is important to include corresponding entries in the changelog, providing a comprehensive summary for the users. | |
| For detailed instructions on how to write changelog entries, please refer to the documentation in [`docs/release.md`](https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p/blob/master/docs/release.md). | |
| ### Merging of PRs is automated | |
| To streamline our workflow, we utilize Mergify and the "send-it" label. | |
| Mergify automates merging actions and helps us manage pull requests more efficiently. | |
| The "send-it" label indicates that a pull request is ready to be merged. | |
| Please refrain from making further commits after the "send-it" label has been applied otherwise your PR will be dequeued from merging automatically. | |
| ### Treat CI as a self-service platform | |
| We have a lot of automated CI checks for common errors. | |
| Please treat our CI as a self-service platform and try to fix any issues before requesting a review. | |