Welcome to the Contributor Guidelines!
This document is for anyone interested in contributing to the p5.js Editor—whether you're new to open source, refreshing your memory on some technical steps, or curious about how the codebase works!
We believe that anyone can be a contributor; you don’t need to be an expert. We also know that not everyone has the same time, energy, or resources to spend, and that’s okay. We’re just glad you’re here!
This guide has been adapted from the Contributor Guidelines within the Processing and p5.js repositories. They're full of helpful and in-depth resources—please check them out!
If you haven't already, read our Community and Statement Code of Conduct to understand the values that guide our community and how to participate respectfully and constructively.
The p5.js Editor’s codebase is hosted on GitHub. GitHub is a website where people can collaborate on code. It’s widely used for open source projects and makes it easier to keep track of changes, report issues with the software, and contribute improvements to the code.
If you're new to GitHub, a good place to start is the First Contribution's tutorial guide, which walks you through the basics of contributing to a project using GitHub Desktop. For more information, we recommend Git and GitHub for Poets, a beginner-friendly video series.
The Hello World and Forking Guides from Github are also great acitivities for exercising how you might want to use these tools and features.
If you're new to open source, start by reading this beginner-friendly guide about contributing to an open source project. It covers why you might want to contribute to a project, what it means to contribute, and how to navigate certain aspects of the contribution process.
As you start navigating the p5.js editor and the codebase, you may want to think about what you're hoping to learn by working on open source project. The p5.js editor is a full-stack web application, therefore there's tons of different areas that you could focus on. Some of them can look like:
- Translation – Help localize the software and documentation in your language. Many of us made our first contribution this way.
- Testing – Try out new releases and report bugs.
- Documentation – Improve tutorials, reference pages, or even this guide!
- Design – Contribute UI design ideas or help improve user experience.
- Project Management - Organizing tickets, pull requests, and tasks.
- Front-End Development - We use React/Redux, CSS/Sass, and CodeMirror.
- Back-End Development - We use Node, Express, MongoDB, Jest, and AWS.
- DevOps - Some tools we use are Travis CI, Jest, Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS.
- Community Support – Answer questions on the forum.
- Education – Create learning resources, curriculums, organize workshops, or share your teaching experiences.
- Art and Projects – Share what you’re making with p5.js or the p5.js Editor!
- Outreach and Advocacy – Help others discover and get excited about the project.
Once you've found something you're excited to contribute to, reference the relevant guides and documentation to make sure you're following the recommended process.
Issues with these labels are a great place to start!
A breakdown of what each label means can be found in the Preparing an Issue Guide.
When approaching these issues, know that it's okay to not know how to fix an issue! Feel free to ask questions about to approach the problem. We are all here to learn and make something awesome. Someone from the community will help you out, and asking questions is a great way to learn about the p5.js editor, its file structure, and development process.
Before beginning work on a code contribution, please make sure that:
- The issue has been discussed and a proposed solution has been agreed upon.
- You have been assigned to the issue.
- If an implementation has been agreed upon but no one has volunteered to take it on, feel free to comment and offer to help. A maintainer can then assign the issue to you.
The best way to verify if an issue is ready to be worked on is checking if it has the Ready for Work label. However, here are a few other suggestions to keep in mind as you explore the issues:
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Please do not open a pull request for an issue that is already assigned to someone else. We follow a “first assigned, first served” approach to avoid duplicated work. If you open a PR for an issue that someone else is already working on, your PR will be closed.
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If an issue has been inactive for a long time, you’re welcome to check in politely by commenting to see if the assignee still plans to work on it or would be open to someone else taking over.
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There’s no hard deadline for completing contributions. We understand that people often contribute on a volunteer basis and timelines may vary. That said, if you run into trouble or have questions at any point, don’t hesitate to ask for help in the issue thread. Maintainers and other community members are here to support you.
Before submitting a pull request, make sure that:
- Your work is related to an issue. Pull requests that do not have an associated issue will not be accepted.
- Your work adheres to the style guidelines and fits in with the rest of the codebase.
- You ran the project locally and tested your changes. Pay special attention to any specific areas of the p5.js editor that may be affected by your changes. Does everything still work as before? Great!
- You reference the Preparing a Pull Request Guide for more details!
- Use the p5.js Editor! Find a bug? Think of something you think would add to the project? Reference the Preparing an Issue Guide and open an issue.
- Expand an existing issue. Sometimes issues are missing steps to reproduce, or need suggestions for potential solutions. Sometimes they need another voice saying, "this is really important!"
- Try getting the project running locally on your computer by following the installation steps.
- Look through the documentation in the developer docs and the development guide. Is there anything that could be expanded? Is there anything missing?