How to contribute
CakePHP loves to welcome your contributions. There are several ways to help out:
- Create an issue on GitHub, if you have found a bug
- Write test cases for open bug issues
- Write patches for open bug/feature issues, preferably with test cases included
- Contribute to the documentation
There are a few guidelines that we need contributors to follow so that we have a
chance of keeping on top of things.
Getting Started
- Make sure you have a GitHub account.
- Submit an issue, assuming one does not already exist.
- Clearly describe the issue including steps to reproduce when it is a bug.
- Make sure you fill in the earliest version that you know has the issue.
- Fork the repository on GitHub.
Making Changes
- Create a topic branch from where you want to base your work.
- This is usually the master branch.
- Only target release branches if you are certain your fix must be on that
branch.
- To quickly create a topic branch based on master;
git branch
master/my_contribution master then checkout the new branch with git
checkout master/my_contribution. Better avoid working directly on the
master branch, to avoid conflicts if you pull in updates from origin.
- Make commits of logical units.
- Check for unnecessary whitespace with
git diff --check before committing.
- Use descriptive commit messages and reference the #issue number.
- Core test cases should continue to pass. You can run tests locally or enable
travis-ci for your fork, so all tests and codesniffs
will be executed.
- Your work should apply the CakePHP coding standards.
Which branch to base the work
- Bugfix branches will be based on master.
- New features that are backwards compatible will be based on next minor release
branch.
- New features or other non backwards compatible changes will go in the next major release branch.
Submitting Changes
- Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository.
- Submit a pull request to the repository in the cakephp organization, with the
correct target branch.
Test cases and codesniffer
CakePHP tests requires PHPUnit.
To run the test cases locally use the following command:
phpunit --stderr tests/TestCase/
You can copy file phpunit.xml.dist to phpunit.xml and modify the database
driver settings as required to run tests for particular database.
You can also register on Travis CI and from your
profile page enable the service hook for your
cakephp fork on github for automated test builds.
To run the sniffs for CakePHP coding standards:
phpcs -p --extensions=php --standard=CakePHP ./src
Check the cakephp-codesniffer
repository to setup the CakePHP standard. The README contains installation info
for the sniff and phpcs.
Additional Resources