# Welcome to the contributing guide for PeerTube
Interested in contributing? Awesome!
**This guide will present you the following contribution topics:**
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- [Translate](#translate)
- [Give your feedback](#give-your-feedback)
- [Write documentation](#write-documentation)
- [Improve the website](#improve-the-website)
- [Develop](#develop)
- [Prerequisites](#prerequisites)
- [Online development](#online-development)
- [Server side](#server-side)
- [Client side](#client-side)
- [Client and server side](#client-and-server-side)
- [Testing the federation of PeerTube servers](#testing-the-federation-of-peertube-servers)
- [Unit tests](#unit-tests)
- [Emails](#emails)
- [Plugins & Themes](#plugins--themes)
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## 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](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/tree/develop/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. You can also use [redoc-cli](https://github.com/Redocly/redoc/blob/master/cli/README.md) and run `redoc-cli serve --watch support/doc/api/openapi.yaml` to see the final result.
Some hints:
* Routes are defined in [/server/controllers/](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/tree/develop/server/controllers) directory
* Parameters validators are defined in [/server/middlewares/validators](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/tree/develop/server/middlewares/validators) directory
* Models sent/received by the controllers are defined in [/shared/models](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/tree/develop/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
Always talk about features you want to develop by creating/finding and commenting the issue tackling your problem
before you start working on it, and inform the community that you begin coding by claiming the issue.
Once you are ready to show your code to ask for feedback, submit a *draft* Pull Request.
Once you are ready for a code review before merge, submit a Pull Request. In any case, please
link your PR to the issues it solves by using the GitHub syntax: "fixes #issue_number".
### 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/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
$ git remote add me git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/PeerTube.git
$ 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.
When you create a new branch you should also tell to use your repo for upload
not default one. To do just do:
```
$ git push --set-upstream me <your branch name>
```
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:
[![Open in Gitpod](https://gitpod.io/button/open-in-gitpod.svg)](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 client 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
Your code contributions must pass the tests before they can be merged. Tests ensure most of the application behaves
as expected and respect the syntax conventions. They will run upon PR submission as part of our CI, but running them beforehand yourself will get you faster feedback and save CI runner time for others.
PeerTube mainly features backend and plugin tests, found in `server/tests`.
#### 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
$ npm run clean:server:test
```
Build the application and run the unit/integration tests:
```
$ npm run build -- --light
$ npm test
```
If you just want to run 1 test (which is what you want to debug a specific test rapidly):
```
$ TS_NODE_FILES=true npm run mocha -- --exit -r ts-node/register -r tsconfig-paths/register --bail server/tests/api/videos/single-server.ts
```
Instance configurations are in `config/test-{1,2,3,4,5,6}.yaml`.
Note that only instance 2 has transcoding enabled.
#### 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`.
### Emails
To test emails with PeerTube:
* Run [mailslurper](http://mailslurper.com/)
* Run PeerTube using mailslurper SMTP port: `NODE_CONFIG='{ "smtp": { "hostname": "localhost", "port": 2500, "tls": false } }' NODE_ENV=test npm start`
## Plugins & Themes
See the dedicated documentation: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/#/contribute-plugins