We understand that you may not have days at a time to work on Kibana. We ask that you read our contributing guidelines carefully so that you spend less time, overall, struggling to push your PR through our code review processes.
At the same time, reading the contributing guidelines will give you a better idea of how to post meaningful issues that will be more easily be parsed, considered, and resolved. A big win for everyone involved! :tada:
## Table of Contents
A high level overview of our contributing guidelines.
- [Effective issue reporting in Kibana](#effective-issue-reporting-in-kibana)
- [Voicing the importance of an issue](#voicing-the-importance-of-an-issue)
Don't fret, it's not as daunting as the table of contents makes it out to be!
### Voicing the importance of an issue
We seriously appreciate thoughtful comments. If an issue is important to you, add a comment with a solid write up of your use case and explain why it's so important. Please avoid posting comments comprised solely of a thumbs up emoji 👍.
Granted that you share your thoughts, we might even be able to come up with creative solutions to your specific problem. If everything you'd like to say has already been brought up but you'd still like to add a token of support, feel free to add a [👍 thumbs up reaction](https://github.com/blog/2119-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments) on the issue itself and on the comment which best summarizes your thoughts.
### "My issue isn't getting enough attention"
First of all, **sorry about that!** We want you to have a great time with Kibana.
Hosting meaningful discussions on GitHub can be challenging. For that reason, we'll sometimes ask that you join us on IRC _([#kibana](https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net/?#kibana) on freenode)_ to chat about your issues. You may also experience **faster response times** when engaging us via IRC.
There's hundreds of open issues and prioritizing what to work on is an important aspect of our daily jobs. We prioritize issues according to impact and difficulty, so some issues can be neglected while we work on more pressing issues.
**Now we're talking**. If you have a bug fix or new feature that you would like to contribute to Kibana, please **find or open an issue about it before you start working on it.** Talk about what you would like to do. It may be that somebody is already working on it, or that there are particular issues that you should know about before implementing the change.
We enjoy working with contributors to get their code accepted. There are many approaches to fixing a problem and it is important to find the best approach before writing too much code.
* All work on the next major release goes into master.
* Past major release branches are named `{majorVersion}.x`. They contain work that will go into the next minor release. For example, if the next minor release is `5.2.0`, work for it should go into the `5.x` branch.
* Past minor release branches are named `{majorVersion}.{minorVersion}`. They contain work that will go into the next patch release. For example, if the next patch release is `5.3.1`, work for it should go into the `5.3` branch.
* All work is done on feature branches and merged into one of these branches.
* Where appropriate, we'll backport changes into older release branches.
### Commits and Merging
* Feel free to make as many commits as you want, while working on a branch.
* When submitting a PR for review, please perform an interactive rebase to present a logical history that's easy for the reviewers to follow.
* Please use your commit messages to include helpful information on your changes, e.g. changes to APIs, UX changes, bugs fixed, and an explanation of *why* you made the changes that you did.
* Resolve merge conflicts by rebasing the target branch over your feature branch, and force-pushing.
* When merging, we'll squash your commits into a single commit.
### What Goes Into a Pull Request
* Please include an explanation of your changes in your PR description.
* Links to relevant issues, external resources, or related PRs are very important and useful.
* Please update any tests that pertain to your code, and add new tests where appropriate.
* See [Submitting a Pull Request](#submitting-a-pull-request) for more info.
Install the version of node.js listed in the `.node-version` file _(this can be easily automated with tools such as [nvm](https://github.com/creationix/nvm) and [avn](https://github.com/wbyoung/avn))_
If you're just getting started with `elasticsearch`, you could use the following command to populate your instance with a few fake logs to hit the ground running.
> On Windows, you'll need you use Git Bash, Cygwin, or a similar shell that exposes the `sh` command. And to successfully build you'll need Cygwin optional packages zip, tar, and shasum.
Now you can point your web browser to https://localhost:5601 and start using Kibana! When running `npm start`, Kibana will also log that it is listening on port 5603 due to the base path proxy, but you should still access Kibana on port 5601.
The `config/kibana.yml` file stores user configuration directives. Since this file is checked into source control, however, developer preferences can't be saved without the risk of accidentally committing the modified version. To make customizing configuration easier during development, the Kibana CLI will look for a `config/kibana.dev.yml` file if run with the `--dev` flag. This file behaves just like the non-dev version and accepts any of the [standard settings](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/settings.html).
In development mode, Kibana runs a customized version of [Webpack](http://webpack.github.io/) with some optimizations enabled to make building the browser bundles as fast as possible. These optimizations make the build process about 2x as fast for initial builds, and about 7x faster for rebuilds, but are labeled "unsafe" by Webpack because they can sometimes cause changes to go unnoticed by the compiler. If you experience any of the scenarios below either restart the dev server, or add `optimize.unsafeCache: false` to your `config/kibana.dev.yml` file to disable these optimizations completely.
- Webpack is trying to include a file in the bundle that I deleted and is now complaining about it is missing
- A module id that used to resolve to a single file now resolves to a directory, but webpack isn't adapting
- (if you discover other scenarios, please send a PR!)
When Kibana runs in development mode it will automatically use bundled SSL certificates. These certificates won't be trusted by your OS by default which will likely cause your browser to complain about the certificate.
A note about linting: We use [eslint](http://eslint.org) to check that the [styleguide](STYLEGUIDE.md) is being followed. It runs in a pre-commit hook and as a part of the tests, but most contributors integrate it with their code editors for real-time feedback.
Another tool we use for enforcing consistent coding style is EditorConfig, which can be set up by installing a plugin in your editor that dynamically updates its configuration. Take a look at the [EditorConfig](http://editorconfig.org/#download) site to find a plugin for your editor, and browse our [`.editorconfig`](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/master/.editorconfig) file to see what config rules we set up.
The standard `npm run test` task runs several sub tasks and can take several minutes to complete, making debugging failures pretty painful. In order to ease the pain specialized tasks provide alternate methods for running the tests.
When you'd like to execute individual server-side test files, you can use the command below. Note that this command takes care of configuring Mocha with Babel compilation for you, and you'll be better off avoiding a globally installed `mocha` package. This command is great for development and for quickly identifying bugs.
```bash
npm run mocha <file>
```
You could also add the `:debug` target so that `node` is run using the `--debug-brk` flag. You'll need to connect a remote debugger such as [`node-inspector`](https://github.com/node-inspector/node-inspector) to proceed in this mode.
```bash
npm run mocha:debug <file>
```
With `npm run test:browser`, you can run only the browser tests. Coverage reports are available for browser tests by running `npm run test:coverage`. You can find the results under the `coverage/` directory that will be created upon completion.
```bash
npm run test:browser
```
Using `npm run test:dev` initializes an environment for debugging the browser tests. Includes an dedicated instance of the kibana server for building the test bundle, and a karma server. When running this task the build is optimized for the first time and then a karma-owned instance of the browser is opened. Click the "debug" button to open a new tab that executes the unit tests.
This should work super if you're using the [Kibana plugin generator](https://github.com/elastic/generator-kibana-plugin). If you're not using the generator, well, you're on your own. We suggest you look at how the generator works.
* [Download IE virtual machines](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/#downloads) for VMWare.
* Open VMWare and go to Window > Virtual Machine Library. Unzip the virtual machine and drag the .vmx file into your Virtual Machine Library.
* Right-click on the virtual machine you just added to your library and select "Snapshots...", and then click the "Take" button in the modal that opens. You can roll back to this snapshot when the VM expires in 90 days.
* In System Preferences > Sharing, change your computer name to be something simple, e.g. "computer".
In order to start the server required for the `test:ui:runner` tasks, use the following command. Once the server is started `test:ui:runner` can be run multiple times without waiting for the server to start.
To run these browser tests against against some other Elasticsearch and Kibana instance you can set these environment variables and then run the test runner.
Here's an example to run against an Elastic Cloud instance (note that you should run the same branch of tests as the version of Kibana you're testing);
[Read about the `FunctionalTestRunner`](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/development-functional-tests.html) to learn more about how you can run and develop functional tests for Kibana core and plugins.
Packages are built using fpm, pleaserun, dpkg, and rpm. fpm and pleaserun can be installed using gem. Package building has only been tested on Linux and is not supported on any other platform.
Please make sure you have signed the [Contributor License Agreement](http://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement/). We are not asking you to assign copyright to us, but to give us the right to distribute your code without restriction. We ask this of all contributors in order to assure our users of the origin and continuing existence of the code. You only need to sign the CLA once.
Push your local changes to your forked copy of the repository and submit a Pull Request. In the Pull Request, describe what your changes do and mention the number of the issue where discussion has taken place, eg “Closes #123″.
Always submit your pull against `master` unless the bug is only present in an older version. If the bug effects both `master` and another branch say so in your pull.
Then sit back and wait. There will probably be discussion about the Pull Request and, if any changes are needed, we'll work with you to get your Pull Request merged into Kibana.
After a pull is submitted, it needs to get to review. If you have commit permission on the Kibana repo you will probably perform these steps while submitting your Pull Request. If not, a member of the Elastic organization will do them for you, though you can help by suggesting a reviewer for your changes if you've interacted with someone while working on the issue.
1. Do **not** assign a version label. Someone from Elastic staff will assign a version label, if necessary, when your Pull Request is ready to be merged.
1. Find someone to review your pull. Don't just pick any yahoo, pick the right person. The right person might be the original reporter of the issue, but it might also be the person most familiar with the code you've changed. If neither of those things apply, or your change is small in scope, try to find someone on the Kibana team without a ton of existing reviews on their plate. As a rule, most pulls will require 2 reviewers, but the first reviewer will pick the 2nd.
Remember, someone is blocked by a pull awaiting review, make it count. Be thorough, the more action items you catch in the first review, the less back and forth will be required, and the better chance the pull has of being successful.
1.**Understand the issue** that is being fixed, or the feature being added. Check the description on the pull, and check out the related issue. If you don't understand something, ask the submitter for clarification.
1.**Reproduce the bug** (or the lack of feature I guess?) in the destination branch, usually `master`. The referenced issue will help you here. If you're unable to reproduce the issue, contact the issue submitter for clarification
1.**Check out the pull** and test it. Is the issue fixed? Does it have nasty side effects? Try to create suspect inputs. If it operates on the value of a field try things like: strings (including an empty string), null, numbers, dates. Try to think of edge cases that might break the code.
1.**Merge the target branch**. It is possible that tests or the linter have been updated in the target branch since the pull was submitted. Merging the pull could cause core to start failing.
1.**Read the code**. Understanding the changes will help you find additional things to test. Contact the submitter if you don't understand something.
1.**Go line-by-line**. Are there [style guide](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/master/STYLEGUIDE.md) violations? Strangely named variables? Magic numbers? Do the abstractions make sense to you? Are things arranged in a testable way?
1.**Speaking of tests** Are they there? If a new function was added does it have tests? Do the tests, well, TEST anything? Do they just run the function or do they properly check the output?
1.**Suggest improvements** If there are changes needed, be explicit, comment on the lines in the code that you'd like changed. You might consider suggesting fixes. If you can't identify the problem, animated screenshots can help the review understand what's going on.
1.**Hand it back** If you found issues, re-assign the submitter to the pull to address them. Repeat until mergable.
1.**Hand it off** If you're the first reviewer and everything looks good but the changes are more than a few lines, hand the pull to someone else to take a second look. Again, try to find the right person to assign it to.
1.**Merge the code** When everything looks good, put in a `LGTM` (looks good to me) comment. Merge into the target branch. Check the labels on the pull to see if backporting is required, and perform the backport if so.
