Contribute

As an open source project, Regolith is open to anyone to extend, fork, or modify as they see fit. Additionally, we welcome people to join as contributors to the project. If you already have something in mind, please file an issue describing the change you’re planning to make to Regolith, or discuss in the Slack channel. This ensures work isn’t duplicated or effort wasted. If you’re interested in seeing what work is available to start with, take a look at the list of issues looking for help to see what is needed. To get a picture of the future, check the roadmap. Regolith is a young project with much potential for improvement!

Financial Support

As of the 1.3 release, Regolith has joined Open Collective as a way of receiving financial contributions from users. Financial contributions are vital to pay for infrastructure costs and fund future development of both Regolith itself as well as the upstream components that Regolith is composed of. Go here to contribute to Regolith.

Join our Slack channel

Click this link to join our Slack channel, which allows you to communicate with the developers of Regolith and other users. Here is where we brainstorm about new features, ways to improve current features, and fix bugs.

Testing Fixes and Features

When bugs are reported by users, we try to have them verify the fix before enabling the update for everyone. Switching to the unstable PPA is necessary for Ubuntu to see that a new version of a package is available for testing a new fix or feature. Once the update has been verified to resolve the problem and not cause any other bugs, it is promoted to the stable PPA for general consumption by Regolith users. We have a separate section which explains the process of package promotion in more detail, and a section about switching between PPAs to test changes.

Official Regolith Contributors

Those that have shown aptitude and desire to help others, fix bugs, or add features to Regolith may be invited to become an official contributor. Official contributors have more abilities with Regolith source repositories and have a high level of trust and agency.

Tasks

Regolith is a volunteer effort, and so there are no specific expectations regarding how much or in what way people contribute. However here are some tasks that are of great help to the project:

• Grooming GitHub issues: If an issue is pending a response from a user and there is no response from the issue creator, close it. If an issue has been resolved but not closed, also close it.
• Following the roadmap: To learn about and contribute to the future roadmap.
• Helping to iron out the little things: As a young project, there are a lot of rough edges so if you want to work in fixes that’s great but also if you’re interested in new features that’s fine too.
• Helping with release planning: We try for a release every 3 - 4 months. Besides feature development and bug fixes, documentation and testing are needed.
• Contributing RFCs: For new features, it is recommended to create a “request for comment” issue (example) and allow some time for user feedback. These RfCs will be advertised via the mailing list and official Twitter account.