Contributing

Contributions are welcome: a bug report, a fix, a translation, a review of someone else’s pull request. The repository’s CONTRIBUTING.md is the authority and this page follows it.

For anything larger than a small fix, open an issue and discuss it before you write code.

What is wanted most#

The team is particularly interested in:

• security improvements
• privacy enhancements
• reliability enhancements
• public sector application experience
• backend development
• frontend development

Contributions are handled in three groups.

Before you open a pull request#

1. Set the project up. The commands are under “Run it locally” on the self-hosting page. The local development guide goes further.
2. Follow the existing code style, add tests for new features and update the documentation your change touches.
3. Run the checks that CI runs.

cd dembrane/platform
bun run check        # lint, types, the layer rule, tests

cd dembrane/frontend
pnpm lint
pnpm exec tsc
pnpm exec vitest run

The backend is Bun and TypeScript. The frontend uses pnpm.

The contributor agreement#

Your first pull request needs the “Dembrane B.V. Individual Contributor License Agreement” (CLA.md).

• You keep all right, title and interest in your contributions, except for the licences you grant.
• You grant Dembrane B.V., and the recipients of its software, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright licence, with the right to sublicense.
• You also grant a patent licence, which ends for anyone who starts patent litigation over the work.
• You state that the contribution is your own original work, or you mark third-party work as such.

To sign, add your GitHub username as a new line in contributors.yml, in the same pull request. A check on every pull request to main comments when the author is missing from that file.

CONTRIBUTING.md also says: “By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under our license.” See licensing.

Review#

1. Initial review by maintainers.
2. Feedback and discussion.
3. Revisions if needed.
4. Final review and merge.

Translations#

You can translate the dashboard and the participant portal without being a developer. TRANSLATING.md in the repository is the guide.

• The interface has 8 languages: English (the source text), Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian and Czech. Italian, Ukrainian and Czech are marked as partial.
• You can suggest wording in an issue, edit a .po file in the browser on GitHub, or edit locally.
• Change msgstr only. Keep placeholders, tags and plural structure exactly. Leave an entry empty when you are unsure.
• Do not edit the generated .ts catalogs by hand. A local change includes both the .po file and the regenerated catalog: run pnpm messages:extract, edit, then pnpm messages:compile in dembrane/frontend.
• A new language starts with an issue. A .po file alone does not enable a language.

Security issues#

Email [email protected] to disclose a security vulnerability. The team investigates all legitimate reports.

Conduct and help#

• The code of conduct is CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md in the repository.
• Create an issue for a bug.
• Email [email protected] for general guidance.

Related#

• Licensing
• Self-hosting
• Local development
• Architecture
• Building on dembrane