The Hugo community and maintainers are [very active](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/pulse/monthly) and helpful, and the project benefits greatly from this activity. We created a [step by step guide](https://gohugo.io/tutorials/how-to-contribute-to-hugo/) if you're unfamiliar with GitHub or contributing to open source projects in general.
*Note that this repository only contains the actual source code of Hugo. For **only** documentation-related pull requests / issues please refer to the [hugoDocs](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugoDocs) repository.*
Hugo has become a fully featured static site generator, so any new functionality must meet these criterias:
* It must be useful to many.
* It must fit natural into _what Hugo does best._
* It must strive not to break existing sites.
* It must close ur update an open [Hugo issue](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues)
* If it is of some complexity, the contributor is expected to maintain and support the new future (answer questions on the forum, fix any bugs etc.).
So, to avoid doing unneeded work, it is recommended to open up a discussion on the [Hugo Forum](https://discourse.gohugo.io/) to get some acceptance that this is a good idea. Also, if this is a complex feature, create a small design proposal on the [Hugo issue tracker](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues) before you start coding.
The Hugo project welcomes all contributors and contributions regardless of skill or experience level.
If you are interested in helping with the project, we will help you with your contribution.
Hugo is a very active project with many contributions happening daily.
Because we want to create the best possible product for our users and the best contribution experience for our developers,
we have a set of guidelines which ensure that all contributions are acceptable.
The guidelines are not intended as a filter or barrier to participation.
If you are unfamiliar with the contribution process, the Hugo team will help you and teach you how to bring your contribution in accordance with the guidelines.
### Code Contribution Guidelines
To make the contribution process as seamless as possible, we ask for the following:
* Go ahead and fork the project and make your changes. We encourage pull requests to allow for review and discussion of code changes.
* Ensure that `mage check` succeeds. [Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/gohugoio/hugo) (Linux and macOS) and [AppVeyor](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/gohugoio/hugo/branch/master) (Windows) will fail the build if `mage check` fails.
This [blog article](http://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/) is a good resource for learning how to write good commit messages,
the most important part being that each commit message should have a title/subject in imperative mood starting with a capital letter and no trailing period:
*"Return error on wrong use of the Paginator"*, **NOT***"returning some error."*
Please consider to use a short and descriptive branch name, e.g. **NOT** "patch-1". It's very common but creates a naming conflict each time when a submission is pulled for a review.
Note that Hugo uses [Go Dep](https://github.com/golang/dep) to vendor dependencies, rather than a a simple `go get`. We don't commit the vendored packages themselves to the Hugo git repository. The call to `mage vendor` takes care of all this for you.
Hugo uses [mage](https://github.com/magefile/mage) to sync vendor dependencies, build Hugo, run the test suite and other things. You must run mage from the Hugo directory.