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Contribution guidelines for modules

This document describes general guidelines for contributing to PrestaShop modules hosted on GitHub.

How to contribute

Contributors wishing to edit a module’s files should follow the following process:

  1. Create your GitHub account, if you do not have one already.

  2. Fork the project to your GitHub account.

  3. Clone your fork to your local machine in the /modules directory of your PrestaShop installation.

  4. Create a branch in your local clone of the module for your changes.

  5. Change the files in your branch.

    • Make sure to follow the coding standards.
    • Do not update the module’s version number.
  6. Push your changed branch to your fork in your GitHub account.

  7. Create a pull request for your changes on the dev branch of the module’s project.

  8. Wait for one of the module maintainers to either include your change in the codebase, or comment on possible improvements you should make to your code.

Requirements

License

Unless specified otherwise, PrestaShop modules are released under the Academic Free License 3.0. All contributions made to those modules are automatically licensed under the same terms.

A license file must be stored inside the module (usually it’s a LICENSE.md file). Its content is the terms of the AFL-3.0 license.

File headers

All files within a module must include the AFL license header, as provided in the coding standards chapter.

They can easily be applied by using the header-stamp binary from PrestaShop modules developer tools.

Contributors file

A list of the project contributors must be stored inside the module. Usually it’s a file named CONTRIBUTORS.md. It must be up-to-date when a new version is released.

About compatibility

Semantic Versioning and BC breaks

PrestaShop and its modules follows SemVer. This means that contributions should strive not to introduce breaking compatibility changes. Therefore, each Pull Request must not introduce such changes, unless aiming to release a new major version.

It is possible to introduce a change that is not backward compatible into the code for a minor or patch version, but it must be for a good reason.

Valid reasons include, but not only:

  • fixing a security issue
  • fixing a major issue that cannot be fixed in a backward compatible manner
  • introducing a major new feature of high value

Compatibility with the Core

The property ps_versions_compliancy allows modules to define a compatibility scope with PrestaShop Core. Submitted Pull Requests must comply with the full defined scope.

For example if the module compatibility scope includes PS 1.7 and PS 8, it is not possible to merge a Pull Request that can only be used with PS 1.7.

If the module uses an extended scope such as:

$this->ps_versions_compliancy = array(
    'min' => '1.7.0.0',
    'max' => _PS_VERSION_,
);

Because the max value will always use the latest PrestaShop version, it means the module must remain compatible with upcoming (not released) PrestaShop versions too.