6.3 KiB
Contributing
On this page you can learn how to contribute to Fractal by working on the code.
Getting Started
Here are a few links to help you get started with Rust and the GTK Rust bindings:
The Rust docs of our application and the GNOME Development Center might also be useful.
Don't hesitate to join our Matrix room to come talk to us and ask us any questions you might have. The “Rust ❤️ GNOME” room can also provide general help about using Rust in GNOME.
Build Instructions
Prerequisites
Fractal is written in Rust, so you will need to have at least Rust 1.76 and Cargo available on your system. You will also need to install the Rust nightly toolchain to be able to run our pre-commit hook, which can be done with:
rustup toolchain install nightly
If you're building Fractal with Flatpak (via GNOME Builder or the command line), you will need to manually add the necessary remotes and install the required freedesktop.org extensions:
# Add Flathub beta and the gnome-nightly repo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub-beta https://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://nightly.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo
# Install the gnome-nightly Sdk and Platform runtime
flatpak install --user gnome-nightly org.gnome.Sdk//master org.gnome.Platform//master
# Install the required rust-stable extension from Flathub beta
flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable//24.08beta
# Install the required llvm extension from Flathub beta
flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.llvm18//24.08beta
If you are building the flatpak manually you will also need flatpak-builder on your system, or the
org.flatpak.Builder flatpak.
GNOME Builder
Using GNOME Builder with flatpak is the recommended way of building and installing Fractal.
You can find help on cloning and building a project in the docs of Builder.
Flatpak via fenv
As an alternative, fenv allows to setup a flatpak environment from the command line and execute commands in that environment.
First, install fenv:
cargo install --git https://gitlab.gnome.org/ZanderBrown/fenv fenv
After that, setup the project:
# Set up the flatpak environment
fenv gen build-aux/org.gnome.Fractal.Devel.json
Finally, build and run the application:
# Build the project
fenv build
# Launch Fractal
fenv run
Note that fenv will use _build as build directory.
To test changes you make to the code, re-run these two last commands.
Install the flatpak
Some features that interact with the system require the app to be installed to test them (i.e. notifications, command line arguments, etc.).
GNOME Builder can export a flatpak of the app after it has been successfully built.
Fractal can then be installed with:
flatpak install --user --bundle path/to/org.gnome.Fractal.Devel.flatpak
Alternatively, it can be built and installed with flatpak-builder:
flatpak-builder --user --install app build-aux/org.gnome.Fractal.Devel.json
Note that the flatpak-builder command can be replaced with flatpak run org.flatpak.Builder.
It can then be entirely removed from your system with:
flatpak remove --delete-data org.gnome.Fractal.Devel
GNU/Linux
If you decide to ignore our recommendation and build on your host system, outside of Flatpak, you will need Meson and Ninja.
meson setup --prefix=/usr/local _build
ninja -C _build
sudo ninja -C _build install
Pre-commit
We expect all code contributions to be correctly formatted. To help with that, a pre-commit hook
should get installed as part of the building process. It runs the hooks/checks.sh script. It's a
quick script that makes sure that the code is correctly formatted with rustfmt, among other
things. Make sure that this script is effectively run before submitting your merge request,
otherwise CI will probably fail right away.
You should also run cargo clippy as that will catch common errors and improve the quality of your
submissions and is once again checked by our CI.
Commit
Please follow the GNOME commit message guidelines. We enforce the use of a tag as a prefix for the summary line. It should be the area of the app that is changed.
Merge Request
You must pass all the prerequisites of the Change Submission Guide.
Before submitting a merge request, make sure that your fork is available publicly, otherwise CI won't be able to run.
Use the title of your commit as the title of your MR if there's only one. Otherwise it should summarize all your commits. If your commits do several tasks that can be separated, open several merge requests.
In the details, write a more detailed description of what it does. If your changes include a change in the UI or the UX, provide screenshots in both light and dark mode, and/or a screencast of the new behavior.
Don't forget to mention the issue that this merge request solves or is related to, if applicable.
GitLab recognizes the syntax Closes #XXXX or Fixes #XXXX that will close the corresponding
issue accordingly when your change is merged.
We expect to always work with a clean commit history. When you apply fixes or suggestions, amend or fixup and squash your previous commits that you can then force push.