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CONTRIBUTION GUIDELINES

Before contributing

Welcome to TheAlgorithms/Go! Before submitting pull requests, please make sure that you have read the whole guidelines. If you have any doubts about this contribution guide, please open an issue or ask in our Discord server / Gitter, and clearly state your concerns.

Contributing

Maintainers


Please check the CODEOWNERS file for a list of repository maintainers.

Contributor


Being a contributor at The Algorithms, we request you to follow the points mentioned below:

  • You did your own work.
    • No plagiarism is allowed. Any plagiarized work will not be merged.
  • Your work will be distributed under the MIT License once your pull request has been merged.
  • Please follow the repository guidelines and standards mentioned below.

New implementation

  • New implementations are welcome!

  • You can add new algorithms or data structures that are not present in the repository or that can improve the old implementations (documentation, improving test cases, removing bugs, or in any other reasonable sense)

Issues

  • Please avoid opening issues asking to be "assigned” to a particular algorithm. This merely creates unnecessary noise for maintainers. Instead, please submit your implementation in a pull request, and it will be evaluated by project maintainers.

Making Changes


Code

  • Please use the directory structure of the repository.
  • Make sure the file extensions should be *.go.
  • Use meaningful variable names.
  • Use standard library inside your code and avoid to import packages from other repositories
  • If an implementation of the algorithm already exists, please refer to the filename section below.
  • You can suggest reasonable changes to existing algorithms.
  • Strictly use snake_case (underscore_separated) in filenames.
  • If you have added or modified code, please make sure the code compiles before submitting.
  • Our automated testing runs LGTM on all the pull requests, so please be sure that your code passes before submitting.
  • Please conform to GoDoc standard and document the code as much as possible. This not only facilitates the readers but also generates the correct info on the website.
  • Be consistent in the use of these guidelines.

Documentation

  • Make sure you put useful comments in your code. Do not comment on obvious things.
  • Please avoid creating new directories if at all possible. Try to fit your work into the existing directory structure. If you want to create a new directory, then please check if a similar category has been recently suggested or created by other pull requests.
  • If you have modified/added documentation, please ensure that your language is concise and must not contain grammatical errors.
  • Do not update README.md along with other changes. First, create an issue and then link to that issue in your pull request to suggest specific changes required to README.md.
  • The repository follows GoDoc standards and auto-generates the repository website. Please ensure the code is documented in this structure. A sample implementation is given below.

Test

  • Make sure to add examples and test cases in your filename_test.go file.
  • If you find an algorithm or document without tests, please feel free to create a pull request or issue describing suggested changes.
  • Please try to add one or more Test functions that will invoke the algorithm implementation on random test data with the expected output.

Benchmark


  • Make sure to add examples and benchmark cases in your filename_test.go or filename_bench.go if you want separated test and benchmark files.
  • If you find an algorithm or document without benchmarks, please feel free to create a pull request or issue describing suggested changes.
  • Please try to add one or more Benchmark functions that will invoke the algorithm implementation.
  • For running the benchmark, you could use this command go test -bench=. for more details, read this article Using Subtests and Sub-benchmarks

Typical structure of a program

// filename
// description: Add one line description here
// details:
// This is a multi-line
// description containing links, references,
// math equations, etc.
// author(s) [Name](https://github.com/handle), [Name](https://github.com/handle)
// see relatedfile.go, anotherfile.go, file_test.go
 
// ** Is just an example of how to write description for package and function and other stuff ... **

// Package sort provides primitives for sorting slices and user-defined
// collections.
package sort

// Reasons why you used those packages 
// name package : Add one line description here
// name2 package : Add one line description here
// ...
import (
   ...
)


// Fprint formats using the default formats for its operands and writes to w.
// Spaces are added between operands when neither is a string.
// It returns the number of bytes written, and any write error encountered.
func Fprint(w io.Writer, a ...any) (n int, err error) {
    ...
}

New File Name guidelines

  • Use lowercase words without "_" for the file name
  • Use "_" as a separator only for _test.go or _bench.go
  • For instance
MyNewGoFile.GO       is incorrect
my_new_go_file.go    is incorrect
mynewgofile.go       is the correct format
mynewgofile_test.go  is the correct format
  • It will be used to dynamically create a directory of files and implementation.
  • File name validation will run on Docker to ensure validity.
  • If an implementation of the algorithm already exists and your version is different from that implemented, please use incremental numeric digit as a suffix. For example: if binarysearch.go already exists in the search folder, and you are contributing a new implementation, the filename should be binarysearch2.go and for a third implementation, binarysearch3.go.
  • Check out Go Package names roles

New Directory guidelines

  • We recommend adding files to existing directories as much as possible.
  • Use lowercase words with "_" as separator ( no spaces or "-" allowed )
  • For instance
SomeNew Fancy-Category          is incorrect
some_new_fancy_category         is correct
  • Filepaths will be used to dynamically create a directory of our algorithms.
  • Filepath validation will run on GitHub Actions to ensure compliance.

Commit Guidelines

  • It is recommended to keep your changes grouped logically within individual commits. Maintainers find it easier to understand changes that are logically spilled across multiple commits. Try to modify just one or two files in the same directory. Pull requests that span multiple directories are often rejected.
git add filexyz.go
git commit -m "your message"

Examples of commit messages with semantic prefixes:

fix: XYZ algorithm bug
feat: add XYZ algorithm
test: add test for XYZ algorithm
docs: add comments and explanation to XYZ algorithm

Common prefixes:

  • fix: A bug fix
  • feat: A new feature
  • docs: Documentation changes
  • test: Correct existing tests or add new ones

For New Gophers


Installing Go

Note: New packages should not be main, and never implement main functions for any package.

Code formatter

To format your code, you can use the gofmt tool directly:

gofmt -w filexyz.go

Or you can use the "go fmt" command:

go fmt path/to/your/package

Building

To build you code locally, simply run:

go build .

Pull Requests


Building Locally

Before submitting a pull request, build the code locally or using the convenient Gitpod Ready-to-Code service.

GitHub Actions

  • Enable GitHub Actions on your fork of the repository. After enabling, it will execute golang_lint_and_test after every push (not a commit).
  • The result can create another commit if the actions made any changes on your behalf.
  • Hence, it is better to wait and check the results of GitHub Actions after every push.
  • Run git pull in your local clone if these actions made many changes to avoid merge conflicts.

Most importantly,

  • Happy coding!