Contributing

Issues

Report issues and suggest features and improvements on the GitHub issue tracker.

If you want to file an issue (bug report or feature request), please provide all the necessary info listed in our issue reporting template (it’s loaded automatically when you create a new GitHub issue).

Please, don’t ask support-like questions on the issue tracker (e.g. "How can I configure RuboCop to do X?") - use the support channels instead.

Code contributions

Patches in any form are always welcome! GitHub pull requests are even better! :-)

Before submitting a pull request make sure all tests are passing and that your patch is in line with the contribution guidelines.

Quick start

$ git clone https://github.com/rubocop/rubocop.git
$ cd rubocop
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake              # run the full CI suite

A typical contribution workflow:

  1. Pick an issue from the issue tracker (look for good first issue or help wanted labels).

  2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b fix-1234-short-description.

  3. Make your changes and add tests (see Development).

  4. Run the full test suite: bundle exec rake.

  5. Add a changelog entry: bundle exec rake changelog:fix (or changelog:new / changelog:change).

  6. Open a pull request.

Documentation

Good documentation is just as important as good code. Please, help us improve RuboCop’s documentation.

You should also check out the cop documentation section of the docs and consider adding or improving Cop descriptions.

Working on the Docs

The manual is generated from the AsciiDoc files in the docs folder of RuboCop’s GitHub repo and is published to https://docs.rubocop.org. Antora is used to convert the manual into HTML. The filesystem layout is described at https://docs.antora.org/antora/3.1/standard-directories/.

To make changes to the manual you simply have to change the files under docs. The manual will be regenerated manually periodically.

The site configuration and build infrastructure live in a separate repo: docs.rubocop.org.

Installing Antora

The instructions here assume you already have (the right version of) node.js installed.

Installing Antora is super simple — just clone the docs site repo and run:

$ cd docs.rubocop.org
$ make install

Check out the detailed installation instructions if you run into any problems.

Building the Site

You can build the documentation locally from the docs.rubocop.org repo.

$ cd docs.rubocop.org
$ make build
You can preview your changes by opening build/site/index.html in your favourite browser.

The site is automatically deployed to GitHub Pages via a GitHub Action on push to master.

If you want to make changes to the manual’s page structure you’ll have to edit nav.adoc.

Working on rubocop.org

The rubocop.org landing page is a separate project, built with Bridgetown and Tailwind CSS. Its source lives at github.com/rubocop/rubocop.org.

To run the site locally you’ll need Ruby (>= 3.2) and Node.js (>= 20):

$ cd rubocop.org
$ bundle install && npm install
$ bin/bridgetown start

Then visit localhost:4000 to preview your changes.

The site is automatically deployed to GitHub Pages on push to main.

Funding

While RuboCop is free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of a couple of thousand dollars would make it possible to pay people to work on certain complex features, fund other development related stuff (e.g. hardware, conference trips) and so on. Raising a monthly budget of over $5000 would open the possibility of someone working full-time on the project which would speed up the pace of development significantly.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences (although currently Open Collective is our preferred funding platform).

If you’re working in a company that’s making significant use of RuboCop we’d appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a RuboCop sponsor.

You can support the development of RuboCop via GitHub Sponsors, Patreon, PayPal, and Open Collective.