Looking to contribute something to Bootstrap? Here's how you can help.
Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.
Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue or assessing patches and features.
The issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports, features requests and submitting pull requests, but please respect the following restrictions:
-
Please do not use the issue tracker for personal support requests. Stack Overflow (
twitter-bootstrap-3
tag), Slack or IRC are better places to get help. -
Please do not derail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.
-
Please do not open issues or pull requests regarding the code in
Normalize
(open them in their respective repositories). -
Please do not open issues regarding the official themes offered on http://themes.getbootstrap.com/. Instead, please email any questions or feedback regarding those themes to
themes AT getbootstrap DOT com
.
Our bug tracker utilizes several labels to help organize and identify issues. Here's what they represent and how we use them:
browser bug
- Issues that are reported to us, but actually are the result of a browser-specific bug. These are diagnosed with reduced test cases and result in an issue opened on that browser's own bug tracker.confirmed
- Issues that have been confirmed with a reduced test case and identify a bug in Bootstrap.css
- Issues stemming from our compiled CSS or source Less files.customizer
- Issues with our web-based Customizer.docs
- Issues for improving or updating our documentation.examples
- Issues involving the example templates included in our docs.feature
- Issues asking for a new feature to be added, or an existing one to be extended or modified. New features require a minor version bump (e.g.,v3.0.0
tov3.1.0
).grunt
- Issues with our included JavaScript-based Gruntfile, which is used to run all our tests, concatenate and compile source files, and more.help wanted
- Issues we need or would love help from the community to resolve.js
- Issues stemming from our compiled or source JavaScript files.meta
- Issues with the project itself or our GitHub repository.
For a complete look at our labels, see the project labels page.
A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful, so thanks!
Guidelines for bug reports:
-
Validate and lint your code — validate your HTML and lint your HTML to ensure your problem isn't caused by a simple error in your own code.
-
Use the GitHub issue search — check if the issue has already been reported.
-
Check if the issue has been fixed — try to reproduce it using the latest
master
or development branch in the repository. -
Isolate the problem — ideally create a reduced test case and a live example. This JS Bin is a helpful template.
A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Please try to be as detailed as possible in your report. What is your environment? What steps will reproduce the issue? What browser(s) and OS experience the problem? Do other browsers show the bug differently? What would you expect to be the outcome? All these details will help people to fix any potential bugs.
Example:
Short and descriptive example bug report title
A summary of the issue and the browser/OS environment in which it occurs. If suitable, include the steps required to reproduce the bug.
- This is the first step
- This is the second step
- Further steps, etc.
<url>
- a link to the reduced test caseAny other information you want to share that is relevant to the issue being reported. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as causing the bug, and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).
Sometimes bugs reported to us are actually caused by bugs in the browser(s) themselves, not bugs in Bootstrap per se. When feasible, we aim to report such upstream bugs to the relevant browser vendor(s), and then list them on our Wall of Browser Bugs and document them in MDN.
Vendor(s) | Browser(s) | Rendering engine | Bug reporting website(s) | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Mozilla | Firefox | Gecko | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi | "Core" is normally the right product option to choose. |
Apple | Safari | WebKit | https://bugs.webkit.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=WebKit https://bugreport.apple.com |
In Apple's bug reporter, choose "Safari" as the product. |
Google, Opera | Chrome, Chromium, Opera v15+ | Blink | https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list | Click the "New issue" button. |
Microsoft | Internet Explorer / Edge | Trident/EdgeHTML | https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/LoadSubmitFeedbackForm |
@twbs-lmvtfy is a Bootstrap bot that hangs out in our GitHub issue tracker and automatically checks for HTML validation errors in live examples (e.g. jsFiddles, JS Bins, Bootplys, Plunks, CodePens, etc.) posted in issue comments. If it finds any errors, it will post a follow-up comment on the issue and point out the errors. If this happens with an example you've posted, please fix the errors and post an updated live example. If you opened a bug report, please check whether the bug still occurs with your revised, valid live example. If the bug no longer occurs, it was probably due to your invalid HTML rather than something in Bootstrap and we'd appreciate it if you could close out the GitHub issue.
Feature requests are welcome, but please note that they must target Bootstrap v4, because Bootstrap v3 is now in maintenance mode and is closed off to new features. This is so that we can focus our efforts on Bootstrap v4, the future of the framework.
Before opening a feature request, please take a moment to find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. It's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's developers of the merits of this feature. Please provide as much detail and context as possible.
Good pull requests—patches, improvements, new features—are a fantastic help. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits.
Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (e.g. implementing features, refactoring code, porting to a different language), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the project's developers might not want to merge into the project.
In particular, pull requests that add new features to Bootstrap v3 will be
rejected. Bootstrap v3 is now in maintenance mode and is therefore closed
off to new features, so that we can focus our efforts on Bootstrap v4, the
future of the framework. Pull requests that add new features should target
Bootstrap v4 (the v4-dev
git branch)
instead, where they will be welcomed and duly considered.
Please adhere to the coding guidelines used throughout the project (indentation, accurate comments, etc.) and any other requirements (such as test coverage).
Do not edit bootstrap.css
, bootstrap-theme.css
, or bootstrap.js
directly! Those files are automatically generated. You should edit the
source files in /bootstrap/less/
and/or /bootstrap/js/
instead.
Similarly, when contributing to Bootstrap's documentation, you should edit the
documentation source files in
the /bootstrap/docs/
directory of the master
branch.
Do not edit the gh-pages
branch. That branch is generated from the
documentation source files and is managed separately by the Bootstrap Core Team.
Adhering to the following process is the best way to get your work included in the project:
-
Fork the project, clone your fork, and configure the remotes:
# Clone your fork of the repo into the current directory git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/bootstrap.git # Navigate to the newly cloned directory cd bootstrap # Assign the original repo to a remote called "upstream" git remote add upstream https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap.git
-
If you cloned a while ago, get the latest changes from upstream:
git checkout master git pull upstream master
-
Create a new topic branch (off the main project development branch) to contain your feature, change, or fix:
git checkout -b <topic-branch-name>
-
Commit your changes in logical chunks. Please adhere to these git commit message guidelines or your code is unlikely be merged into the main project. Use Git's interactive rebase feature to tidy up your commits before making them public.
-
Locally merge (or rebase) the upstream development branch into your topic branch:
git pull [--rebase] upstream master
-
Push your topic branch up to your fork:
git push origin <topic-branch-name>
-
Open a Pull Request with a clear title and description against the
master
branch.
IMPORTANT: By submitting a patch, you agree to allow the project owners to license your work under the terms of the MIT License (if it includes code changes) and under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (if it includes documentation changes).
@twbs-rorschach is a Bootstrap bot that hangs out in our GitHub issue tracker and automatically checks all pull requests for a few simple common mistakes. It's possible that Rorschach might leave a comment on your pull request and then close it. If that happens, simply fix the problem(s) mentioned in the comment (there should be link(s) in the comment explaining the problem(s) in detail) and then either:
- Push the revised version to your pull request's branch and post a comment on the pull request saying that you've fixed the problem(s). One of the Bootstrap Core Team members will then come along and reopen your pull request.
- Or you can just open a new pull request for your revised version.
@twbs-savage is a Bootstrap bot that automatically runs cross-browser tests (via Sauce and Travis CI) on JavaScript pull requests. Savage will leave a comment on pull requests stating whether cross-browser JS tests passed or failed, with a link to the full Travis build details. If your pull request fails, check the Travis log to see which browser + OS combinations failed. Each browser test in the Travis log includes a link to a Sauce page with details about the test. On those details pages, you can watch a screencast of the test run to see exactly which unit tests failed.
- Use tags and elements appropriate for an HTML5 doctype (e.g., self-closing tags).
- Use CDNs and HTTPS for third-party JS when possible. We don't use protocol-relative URLs in this case because they break when viewing the page locally via
file://
. - Use WAI-ARIA attributes in documentation examples to promote accessibility.
- When feasible, default color palettes should comply with WCAG color contrast guidelines.
- Except in rare cases, don't remove default
:focus
styles (via e.g.outline: none;
) without providing alternative styles. See this A11Y Project post for more details.
- No semicolons (in client-side JS)
- 2 spaces (no tabs)
- strict mode
- "Attractive"
Run grunt test
before committing to ensure your changes follow our coding standards.
By contributing your code, you agree to license your contribution under the MIT License. By contributing to the documentation, you agree to license your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Prior to v3.1.0, Bootstrap's code was released under the Apache License v2.0.