The Rust-Lightning project operates an open contributor model where anyone is welcome to contribute towards development in the form of peer review, documentation, testing and patches.
Anyone is invited to contribute without regard to technical experience, "expertise", OSS experience, age, or other concern. However, the development of cryptocurrencies demands a high-level of rigor, adversarial thinking, thorough testing and risk-minimization. Any bug may cost users real money. That being said, we deeply welcome people contributing for the first time to an open source project or pick up Rust while contributing. Don't be shy, you'll learn.
Communication about Rust-Lightning happens primarily on #ldk-dev on the LDK slack, but also #rust-bitcoin on IRC Freenode.
Discussion about code base improvements happens in GitHub issues and on pull requests.
Major projects are tracked here. Major milestones are tracked here.
The codebase is maintained using the "contributor workflow" where everyone without exception contributes patch proposals using "pull requests". This facilitates social contribution, easy testing and peer review.
To contribute a patch, the worflow is a as follows:
- Fork Repository
- Create topic branch
- Commit patches
In general commits should be atomic and diffs should be easy to read. For this reason do not mix any formatting fixes or code moves with actual code changes. Further, each commit, individually, should compile and pass tests, in order to ensure git bisect and other automated tools function properly.
When adding a new feature, like implementing a BOLT spec object, thought must be given to the long term technical debt. Every new features should be covered by functional tests.
When refactoring, structure your PR to make it easy to review and don't hestitate to split it into multiple small, focused PRs.
The Minimal Supported Rust Version is 1.22.0 (enforced by our Travis).
Commits should cover both the issue fixed and the solution's rationale. These guidelines should be kept in mind.
To facilitate communication with other contributors, the project is making use of GitHub's "assignee" field. First check that no one is assigned and then comment suggesting that you're working on it. If someone is already assigned, don't hesitate to ask if the assigned party or previous commenters are still working on it if it has been awhile.
Anyone may participate in peer review which is expressed by comments in the pull request. Typically reviewers will review the code for obvious errors, as well as test out the patch set and opine on the technical merits of the patch. PR should be reviewed first on the conceptual level before focusing on code style or grammar fixes.
Use tabs. If you want to align lines, use spaces. Any desired alignment should display fine at any tab-length display setting.
Security is the primary focus of Rust-Lightning; disclosure of security vulnerabilites helps prevent user loss of funds. If you believe a vulnerability may affect other Lightning implementations, please inform them.
Note that Rust-Lightning is currently considered "pre-production" during this time, there is no special handling of security issues. Please simply open an issue on Github.
Related to the security aspect, Rust-Lightning developers take testing very seriously. Due to the modular nature of the project, writing new functional tests is easy and good test coverage of the codebase is an important goal. Refactoring the project to enable fine-grained unit testing is also an ongoing effort.
Fuzzing is heavily encouraged: you will find all related material under fuzz/
Mutation testing is work-in-progress; any contribution there would be warmly welcomed.
You may be interested by Jon Atack guide on How to review Bitcoin Core PRs and How to make Bitcoin Core PRs. While there are differences between the projects in terms of context and maturity, many of the suggestions offered apply to this project.
Overall, have fun :)