1# Contributing to Vim 2 3Patches are welcome in whatever form. 4Discussions about patches happen on the vim-dev maillist. 5If you create a pull request on GitHub it will be 6forwarded to the vim-dev maillist. You can also send your patch there 7directly. An attachment with a unified diff format is preferred. 8Information about the maillist can be found [on the Vim website]. 9 10[on the Vim website]: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev 11 12Please consider adding a test. Test coverage isn't very good yet, this needs 13to improve. Look through recent patches for examples. The tests are located 14under "src/testdir". 15 16 17# Reporting issues 18 19We use GitHub issues, but that is not a requirement. Writing to the Vim 20maillist is also fine. 21 22Please use the GitHub issues only for actual issues. If you are not 100% sure 23that your problem is a Vim issue, please first discuss this on the Vim user 24maillist. Try reproducing the problem without any of your plugins or settings: 25 26 vim --clean 27 28If you report an issue, please describe exactly how to reproduce it. 29For example, don't say "insert some text" but say what you did exactly: 30"ahere is some text<Esc>". 31Ideally, the steps you list can be used to write a test to verify the problem 32is fixed. 33 34Feel free to report even the smallest problem, also typos in the documentation. 35 36You can find known issues in the todo file: ":help todo". 37Or open [the todo file] on GitHub to see the latest version. 38 39[the todo file]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/todo.txt 40 41 42# Syntax, indent and other runtime files 43 44The latest version of these files can be obtained from the repository. 45They are usually not updated with numbered patches. 46 47If you find a problem with one of these files or have a suggestion for 48improvement, please first try to contact the maintainer directly. 49Look in the header of the file for the name and email address. 50 51The maintainer will take care of issues and send updates to Bram for 52distribution with Vim. 53 54If the maintainer does not respond, contact the vim-dev maillist. 55 56 57# Translations 58 59Translating messages and runtime files is very much appreciated! These things 60can be translated: 61* Messages in Vim, see [src/po/README.txt][1] 62 Also used for the desktop icons. 63* Menus, see [runtime/lang/README.txt][2] 64* Vim tutor, see [runtime/tutor/README.txt][3] 65* Manual pages, see [runtime/doc/\*.1][4] for examples 66* Installer, see [nsis/lang/\*.nsi][5] for examples 67 68The help files can be translated and made available separately. 69See https://www.vim.org/translations.php for examples. 70 71[1]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/src/po/README.txt 72[2]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/lang/README.txt 73[3]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/tutor/README.txt 74[4]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/vim.1 75[5]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/nsis/lang/english.nsi 76