Contributing to Calculator

The Calculator team encourages community feedback and contributions. Thank you for your interest in making Calculator better! There are several ways you can get involved.

Reporting issues and suggesting new features

If Calculator is not working properly, please file a report in the Feedback Hub. Feedback Hub reports automatically include diagnostic data, such as the version of Calculator you're using.

We are happy to hear your ideas for the future of Calculator. Check the Feedback Hub and see if others have submitted similar feedback. You can upvote existing feedback or submit a new suggestion.

We always look at upvoted items in Feedback Hub when we decide what to work on next. We read the comments in both Feedback Hub and GitHub, and we look forward to hearing your input. Remember that all community interactions must abide by the Code of Conduct.

Finding issues you can help with

Looking for something to work on? Issues marked good first issue are a good place to start.

You can also check the help wanted tag to find other issues to help with.

Contributions we accept

We welcome your contributions to the Calculator project, especially to fix bugs and to make improvements which address the top issues reported by Calculator users.

We have a high bar for new features and changes to the user experience. We prefer to evaluate prototypes to ensure that the design meets users' needs before we start discussing implementation details and reviewing code. We follow a user-centered process for developing features. New features need sponsorship from the Calculator team, but we welcome community contributions at many stages of the process.

Making changes to the code

Preparing your development environment

To learn how to build the code and run tests, follow the instructions in the README.

Style guidelines

The code in this project uses several different coding styles, depending on the age and history of the code. Please attempt to match the style of surrounding code as much as possible. In new components, prefer the patterns described in the C++ core guidelines and the modern C++/WinRT language projections.

Testing

Your change should include tests to verify new functionality wherever possible. Code should be structured so that it can be unit tested independently of the UI. Manual test cases should be used where automated testing is not feasible.

Git workflow

Calculator uses the GitHub flow where most development happens directly on the master branch. The master branch should always be in a healthy state which is ready for release.

If your change is complex, please clean up the branch history before submitting a pull request. You can use git rebase to group your changes into a small number of commits which we can review one at a time.

When completing a pull request, we will generally squash your changes into a single commit. Please let us know if your pull request needs to be merged as separate commits.

Submitting a pull request and participating in code review

Writing a good description for your pull request is crucial to help reviewers and future maintainers understand your change. More detail is better.

• Link the issue you're addressing in the pull request.
• Describe why the change is being made and why you've chosen a particular solution.
• Describe any manual testing you performed to validate your change.

Please submit one pull request per issue. Large pull requests which have unrelated changes can be difficult to review.

After submitting a pull request, members of the calculator team will review your code. We will assign the request to an appropriate reviewer within two days. Any member of the community may participate in the review, but at least one member of the Calculator team will ultimately approve the request.

Often, multiple iterations will be needed to responding to feedback from reviewers. Try looking at past pull requests to see what the experience might be like.

Contributor License Agreement

Before we can review and accept a pull request from you, you'll need to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA). The CLA ensures that the community is free to use your contributions. More information about the agreement is available on the Microsoft web site. Signing the CLA is an automated process, and you only need to do it once for Microsoft projects on GitHub.

You don't need to sign a CLA until you're ready to create a pull request. When your pull request is created, it is classified by a bot. If the change is trivial (i.e. you just fixed a typo) then the bot will label the PR cla-not-required. Otherwise, it's classified as cla-required. In that case, the system will also tell you how you can sign the CLA. Once you have signed a CLA, the current and all future pull requests will be labeled as cla-signed.