Contributing guidelines

If you are here, it means that you are interested in contributing to this project, and we are happy about it! You will find a collections of useful resources to get started, whatever you would like to contribute.

Don’t know what to work on? No worries, we have a list of things to do!

The project organization#

The project is organized in multiple repositories for us to be able to work on a project (eg the standard library) and update it multiple times without having to roll X different updates for the main repository, the language itself.

• ArkScript, the language
  • The standard library
  • The C++ modules, part of the standard library
• This website
• The online playground
• The benchmarks
• The syntax coloration plugins
• A documentation tool for ArkScript code

Getting started#

The architecture of the project#

For an in-depth explanation: Understanding the project architecture.

Strict No LLM / No AI Policy#

No LLMs for issues.

No LLMs for patches / pull requests.

No LLMs for comments on the bug tracker, including translation.

English is encouraged, but not required. You are welcome to post in your native language and rely on others to have their own translation tools of choice to interpret your words.

Contributing to the language, ArkScript#

• First, fork the repository
• Then, clone your fork:
  • HTTPS: git clone https://github.com/<username>/Ark.git
  • or SSH: git clone git@github.com:<username>/Ark.git
• Install the pre-commit hooks: pre-commit install (you may need to install pre-commit first)
• git submodule update --init --recursive to clone all the submodules used by the project.
• Create a branch for your feature: git switch -c feat/my-awesome-idea
• When you’re done, push it to your fork and submit a pull request

It is advised to do this even if you want to contribute to a subproject used by ArkScript, so that you can modify the project and test it directly.

Then check that everything builds correctly, and you’re good to go.

Don’t forget to launch the tests, and/or to add tests to ensure your update works!

If you are modifying a subproject, cd in it and change its git remote to point to your fork, then make a PR for your fork, not for the whole ArkScript repository.

Contributing to the standard library#

• git clone https://github.com/ArkScript-lang/std.git

You want to add a new function to the standard library, or even a new collection of functions? In the first case, you will need to find in which category it should go (see the standard library documentation) ; in the second case you will have to create a new <File>.ark in the project.

Once your contribution is ready, add at least two tests for it: one checking that it works, another for a potential edge case. You will want to add it under tests/<category>-tests.ark.

Finally, document your function(s) using ArkDoc syntax.

Adding an external C or C++ library to a project#

Use git submodules instead of copying and pasting the code somewhere: git submodule add https://github.com/user/name.git submodules/name and add it to the needed CMakeLists.

An idea, a question, a suggestion or a problem?#

Just create an issue in the appropriate repository, we look at them every day.