Flexera-Launcher/CONTRIBUTING.md

Lawnchair contributing guidelines

Welcome to the Lawnchair project. We appreciate your interest in contributing. If you have questions, feel free to reach out on Telegram or Discord.

No-code contributions

• For bug reports, please be as detailed as possible and provide clear steps to reproduce the issue.
• For feature requests, clearly describe the feature and its potential benefits.
• For security vulnerabilities, follow the instructions in our Security Policy
• For translations, visit Lawnchair on Crowdin.
• For documentation, follow the developer documentation style guide of Google.

Tips for contributing

• Follow our Code of Conduct.
• Use Lawnchair's Nightly builds before creating issues.

Contributing code

Getting started

1. Clone the repository with the --recursive flag to include the project's submodules:

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair.git
   

2. Open the project in Android Studio.
3. Select the lawnWithQuickstepGithubDebug build variant.

If you encounter errors with modules that end with the lib suffix, such as iconloaderlib or searchuilib, run git submodule update --init --recursive.

Here are some contribution tips to help you get started:

• Ensure you are up to date with Lawnchair by setting your base branch to 16-dev.
• Make sure your code is logical and formatted correctly. For Kotlin, see the Kotlin coding conventions.
• The lawnchair package houses Lawnchair’s own code, whereas the src package includes a clone of the Launcher3 codebase with modifications. Generally, place new files in the former and keep changes to the latter to a minimum.

Additional documentation

• Roadmap
• Wiki
• Visual guidelines
• compatLib module
• preferences directory
• libs/systemui framework module
• packages/SystemUI app
• Prebuilt libraries

Development workflow

We use a tiered workflow to balance development speed with stability. The process for merging a change depends on its complexity and risk. All PRs should target the 16-dev branch.

Tier	Definition	Examples	Protocol
Trivial changes	Changes with zero risk of functional regression.	Fixing typos in comments or UI text (docs, fix), simple code style fixes (style).	Commit directly to the active branch.
Simple, self-contained work	Changes that are functionally isolated and have a very low risk of side effects.	Most single-file bug fixes, minor UX polish (padding, colors).	1. Create a Pull Request. 2. Assign a reviewer. 3. Enable "Auto-merge" on the PR. It will merge automatically after CI passes and a reviewer approves.
Medium complexity features	New features or changes that affect multiple components but are not deeply architectural.	A new settings screen, a new drawer search provider	1. Create a detailed Pull Request. 2. Assign the core team for review.
Major architectural changes	High-risk, complex changes that affect the core foundation of the app.	Android version rebase	1. Create a very detailed Pull Request. 2. Mandatory Review: You must wait for at least one formal approval from a key team member before merging. The "Merge on Silence" rule does not apply.

Commit message convention

We follow the Conventional Commits specification.

• Format: type(scope): subject
• Example: feat(settings): Add toggle for new feature
• Allowed types: feat, fix, style, refactor, perf, docs, test, chore.

Versioning scheme

Lawnchair’s version code is composed of five parts, separated by underscores:

1. Android major version
2. Android minor version
3. Lawnchair development stage
4. Lawnchair development version
5. Revision/Release number

Lawnchair development stages

The following table lists the development stages used by Lawnchair:

Stage	Denote
Development	00
Alpha	01
Beta	02
Release Candidate	03
Release	04

string.xml naming

String name attributes in strings.xml should follow this format:

Type	Format	Example usage	Actual string	Other information
Generic word	$1	disagree_or_agree	Disagree or agree	Should only be used if it doesn't fit the categories below.
Action	$1_action	apply_action	Apply	Any generic action verb fits here.
Preference or popup label Preference headers	$1_label	folders_label	Folders
Preference or popup description	$1_description	folders_description	Row and column count
Preference choice	$1_choice	off_choice	Off
Feature string	(feature_name)_$1	colorpicker_hsb	HSB	Feature strings are confined to a specific feature. Examples include the gesture and color picker.
Launcher string	$1_launcher	device_contacts_launcher	Contacts from device	Strings that are specific to the Launcher area.

Updating the locally stored Google Fonts listing

Lawnchair uses a locally stored JSON file (google_fonts.json) to list available fonts from Google Fonts. This file should be updated periodically or before a release.

To update the font listing, follow these steps:

1. Obtain a Google Fonts Developer API key.
2. Download the JSON file from https://www.googleapis.com/webfonts/v1/webfonts?key=API_KEY, replacing API_KEY with your key.
3. Replace the content of google_fonts.json with the API response.