# Contributing

Welcome stranger!

If you have come here to learn how to contribute to mdBook, we have some tips for you!

First of all, don't hesitate to ask questions!
Use the [issue tracker](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook/issues), no question is too simple.
If we don't respond in a couple of days, ping us @Michael-F-Bryan, @budziq, @steveklabnik, @frewsxcv it might just be that we forgot. :wink:

### Issues to work on

Any issue is up for the grabbing, but if you are starting out, you might be interested in the
[E-Easy issues](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AE-Easy).
Those are issues that are considered more straightforward for beginners to Rust or the codebase itself.
These issues can be a good launching pad for more involved issues. Easy tasks for a first time contribution
include documentation improvements, new tests, examples, updating dependencies, etc.

If you come from a web development background, you might be interested in issues related to web technologies tagged
[A-JavaScript](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AA-JavaScript),
[A-Style](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AA-Style),
[A-HTML](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AA-HTML) or
[A-Mobile](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AA-Mobile).

When you decide you want to work on a specific issue, ping us on that issue so that we can assign it to you.
Again, do not hesitate to ask questions. We will gladly mentor anyone that want to tackle an issue.

Issues on the issue tracker are categorized with the following labels:

- **A**-prefixed labels state which area of the project an issue relates to.
- **E**-prefixed labels show an estimate of the experience necessary to fix the issue.
- **M**-prefixed labels are meta-issues used for questions, discussions, or tracking issues
- **S**-prefixed labels show the status of the issue
- **T**-prefixed labels show the type of issue

### Building mdBook

mdBook builds on stable Rust, if you want to build mdBook from source, here are the steps to follow:

1. Navigate to the directory of your choice
0. Clone this repository with git.

   ```
   git clone https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook.git
   ```
0. Navigate into the newly created `mdBook` directory
0. Run `cargo build`

The resulting binary can be found in `mdBook/target/debug/` under the name `mdBook` or `mdBook.exe`.

### Making a pull-request

When you feel comfortable that your changes could be integrated into mdBook, you can create a pull-request on GitHub.
One of the core maintainers will then approve the changes or request some changes before it gets merged.

If you want to make your pull-request even better, you might want to run [Clippy](https://github.com/Manishearth/rust-clippy)
and [rustfmt](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/rustfmt) on the code first.
This is not a requirement though and will never block a pull-request from being merged.

That's it, happy contributions! :tada: :tada: :tada: