# Welcome to the contributing guide for PeerTube
Interested in contributing? Awesome!
**This guide will present you the following contribution topics:**
* [Translate](#translate)
* [Give your feedback](#give-your-feedback)
* [Write documentation](#write-documentation)
* [Develop](#develop)
* [Improve the website](#improve-the-website)
## Translate
You can help us to translate the PeerTube interface to many languages! See [the documentation](/support/doc/translation.md) to know how.
## Give your feedback
You don't need to know how to code to start contributing to PeerTube! Other
contributions are very valuable too, among which: you can test the software and
report bugs, you can give feedback on potential bugs, features that you are
interested in, user interface, design, decentralized architecture...
## Write documentation
You can help to write the documentation of the REST API, code, architecture,
demonstrations.
For the REST API you can see the documentation in [/support/doc/api](/support/doc/api) directory.
Then, you can just open the `openapi.yaml` file in a special editor like [http://editor.swagger.io/](http://editor.swagger.io/) to easily see and edit the documentation.
Some hints:
* Routes are defined in [/server/controllers/](/server/controllers/) directory
* Parameters validators are defined in [/server/middlewares/validators](/server/middlewares/validators) directory
* Models sent/received by the controllers are defined in [/shared/models](/shared/models) directory
## Improve the website
PeerTube's website is [joinpeertube.org](https://joinpeertube.org), where people can learn about the project and how it works – note that it is not a PeerTube instance, but rather the project's homepage.
You can help us improve it too!
It is not hosted on GitHub but on [Framasoft](https://framasoft.org/)'s own [GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/) instance, [FramaGit](https://framagit.org): https://framagit.org/framasoft/peertube/joinpeertube
## Develop
Don't hesitate to talk about features you want to develop by creating/commenting an issue
before you start working on them :).
### Prerequisites
First, you should use a server or PC with at least 4GB of RAM. Less RAM may lead to crashes.
Make sure that you have followed
[the steps](/support/doc/dependencies.md)
to install the dependencies.
Fork the github repository,
and then clone the sources and install node modules:
```
$ git clone https://github.com/YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/PeerTube
$ cd PeerTube
$ yarn install --pure-lockfile
```
Note that development is done on the `develop` branch. If you want to hack on
Peertube, you should switch to that branch. Also note that you have to repeat
the `yarn install --pure-lockfile` command.
Then, create a postgres database and user with the values set in the
`config/default.yaml` file. For instance, if you do not change the values
there, the following commands would create a new database called `peertube_dev`
and a postgres user called `peertube` with password `peertube`:
```
# sudo -u postgres createuser -P peertube
Enter password for new role: peertube
# sudo -u postgres createdb -O peertube peertube_dev
```
Then enable extensions PeerTube needs:
```
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;" peertube_dev
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION unaccent;" peertube_dev
```
In dev mode, administrator username is **root** and password is **test**.
### Online development
You can get a complete PeerTube development setup with Gitpod, a free one-click online IDE for GitHub:
[](https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)
### Server side
You can find a documentation of the server code/architecture [here](https://docs.joinpeertube.org/#/contribute-architecture?id=server-code).
To develop on the server-side:
```
$ npm run dev:server
```
Then, the server will listen on `localhost:9000`. When server source files
change, these are automatically recompiled and the server will automatically
restart.
### Client side
You can find a documentation of the server code/architecture
[here](https://docs.joinpeertube.org/#/contribute-architecture?id=client-code).
To develop on the client side:
```
$ npm run dev:client
```
The API will listen on `localhost:9000` and the frontend on `localhost:3000`.
Client files are automatically compiled on change, and the web browser will
reload them automatically thanks to hot module replacement.
### Client and server side
The API will listen on `localhost:9000` and the frontend on `localhost:3000`.
File changes are automatically recompiled, injected in the web browser (no need to refresh manually)
and the web server is automatically restarted.
```
$ npm run dev
```
### Testing the federation of PeerTube servers
Create a PostgreSQL user **with the same name as your username** in order to avoid using the *postgres* user.
Then, we can create the databases (if they don't already exist):
```
$ sudo -u postgres createuser you_username --createdb
$ createdb -O peertube peertube_test{1,2,3}
```
Build the application and flush the old tests data:
```
$ npm run build -- --light
$ npm run clean:server:test
```
This will run 3 nodes:
```
$ npm run play
```
Then you will get access to the three nodes at `http://localhost:900{1,2,3}`
with the `root` as username and `test{1,2,3}` for the password.
Instance configurations are in `config/test-{1,2,3}.yaml`.
### Unit tests
Create a PostgreSQL user **with the same name as your username** in order to avoid using the *postgres* user.
Then, we can create the databases (if they don't already exist):
```
$ sudo -u postgres createuser you_username --createdb --superuser
$ createdb -O peertube peertube_test{1,2,3,4,5,6}
```
Build the application and run the unit/integration tests:
```
$ npm run build
$ npm test
```
If you just want to run 1 test:
```
$ npm run mocha -- --exit --require ts-node/register/type-check --bail server/tests/api/index.ts
```
Instance configurations are in `config/test-{1,2,3,4,5,6}.yaml`.
Note that only instance 2 has transcoding enabled.
