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CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing to PCL

Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.

Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue or assessing patches and features.

Using the issue tracker

The issue tracker is the preferred channel for submitting pull requests and bug reports, but please respect the following restrictions:

  • Please do not use the issue tracker for personal support requests. Please consider one of the following alternatives instead:
    • Stack Overflow for Q&A as well as support for troubleshooting, installation and debugging. Do remember to tag your questions with the tag point-cloud-library.
    • Discord Server for live chat with other members of the PCL community and casual discussions
  • Please do not derail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.

Pull requests

Good pull requests - patches, improvements, new features - are a fantastic help. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits.

Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (e.g. implementing features, refactoring code), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the project's developers might not want to merge into the project. Please read the tutorial on writing a new PCL class if you want to contribute a brand new feature.

If you are new to Git, GitHub, or contributing to an open-source project, you may want to consult the step-by-step guide on preparing and submitting a pull request.

Checklist

Please use the following checklist to make sure that your contribution is well prepared for merging into PCL:

  1. Source code adheres to the coding conventions described in PCL Style Guide. But if you modify existing code, do not change/fix style in the lines that are not related to your contribution.

  2. Commit history is tidy (no merge commits, commits are squashed into logical units).

  3. Each contributed file has a license text on top.

Bug reports

A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful - thank you!

Guidelines for bug reports:

  1. Check if the issue has been reported — use GitHub issue search and mailing list archive search.

  2. Check if the issue has been fixed — try to reproduce it using the latest master branch in the repository.

  3. Isolate the problem — ideally create a reduced test case.

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Please try to be as detailed as possible in your report. What is your environment? What steps will reproduce the issue? What would you expect to be the outcome? All these details will help people to fix any potential bugs.

Example:

Short and descriptive example bug report title

A summary of the issue and the OS environment in which it occurs. If suitable, include the steps required to reproduce the bug.

  1. This is the first step
  2. This is the second step
  3. Further steps, etc.

Any other information you want to share that is relevant to the issue being reported. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as causing the bug, and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).

License

PCL is 100% BSD licensed, and by submitting a patch, you agree to allow Open Perception, Inc. to license your work under the terms of the BSD License. The corpus of the license should be inserted as a C++ comment on top of each .h and .cpp file:

/*
 * Software License Agreement (BSD License)
 *
 *  Point Cloud Library (PCL) - www.pointclouds.org
 *  Copyright (c) 2014-, Open Perception, Inc.
 *
 *  All rights reserved.
 *
 *  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 *  modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
 *  are met:
 *
 *   * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
 *     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
 *   * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
 *     copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
 *     disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
 *     with the distribution.
 *   * Neither the name of the copyright holder(s) nor the names of its
 *     contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
 *     from this software without specific prior written permission.
 *
 *  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
 *  "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
 *  LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
 *  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 *  COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
 *  INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
 *  BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
 *  LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
 *  CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
 *  LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN
 *  ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
 *  POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
 *
 */

Please note that if the academic institution or company you are affiliated with does not allow to give up the rights, you may insert an additional copyright line.