## Contributing

Welcome to The Lounge, it's great to have you here! We thank you in advance for
your contributions.

### I have a question

Find us on #thelounge channel on Freenode. You might not get an answer right
away, but this channel is filled with nice people who will be happy to help you.

### I want to report a bug

First of all, look at the
[open and closed issues](https://github.com/thelounge/lounge/issues?q=is%3Aissue)
to see if this was not already discussed before.

### I want to contribute to the code

A good starting point if you want to help us but do not have a clear idea of
what you can do specifically is to
look at the open issues labeled as [*quick and
easy*](https://github.com/thelounge/lounge/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Abug+label%3A%22quick+and+easy%22)
or [*help
wanted*](https://github.com/thelounge/lounge/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Abug+label%3A%22help+wanted%22).

Also, make sure that your PRs do not contain unnecessary commits. If you think
some of your commits should be merged into a single one, feel free to [squash
them](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Rewriting-History).

Please [rebase](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Rebasing) outdated
PRs on master to help with the reviews (rebasing is preferred over merging to
keep a clean history in a branch/PR).

Additionally, give extra care to your commit messages, as they will help us
review your PRs as well as help other contributors in the future, when exploring
the history. The general rules are to [use the imperative present
tense](https://git-scm.com/book/ch5-2.html#Commit-Guidelines), to start with a
single concise line, followed by a blank line and a more detailed explanation
when necessary. Tim Pope wrote an [excellent
article](http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html)
on how one should format their commit messages.

When you send a PR, expect two different reviews from the project
maintainers. You can read more about this in the [maintainers'
corner](https://github.com/thelounge/lounge/wiki/Maintainers'-corner).

Please document any relevant changes in the documentation that can be found
[in its own repository](https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge.github.io).