bitburner-src/doc/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Bitburner

In General

The game is made better because the community as a whole speaks up about ways to improve the game. Here are some of the ways you can make your voice heard:

• Discord. There is a dedicated Discord instance set up for more free-form chats between all members of the community. Regular players, heavy scripters, Bitburner contributors, and everyone in between can be found on the server.
• Github Issues. Although the term "issues" can have a negative connotation, they are a means of communicating with the community. A new Issue can be an interesting new feature that you feel would improve the game. It could be an unexpected behavior within the game. Or because the game is about scripting perhaps there is something that is conflicting with the browser's JavaScript interaction. So please do not be afraid to open a new Issue.

Reporting Bugs

The recommended method for reporting a bug is by opening a Github Issue.

Alternatively, you can post a bug by creating a post on the game's subreddit.

Before submitting a bug report, please check to make sure the bug has not already been reported as an Issue.

How to Submit a Good Bug Report

• Use a clear and descriptive title for the Issue.
• State your browser, your browser's version, and your computer's OS.
• Attach your save file, if you think it would help solve the Issue. Zip your save file first, then attach the zipped save file.
• Provide instructions on how to reproduce the bug in as much detail as possible. If you cannot reliably reproduce the bug, then just try your best to explain what was happening when the bug occurred.
• Provide any scripts that triggered the bug if the Issue is Netscript-related.
• Open your browser's Dev Console and report any error-related output that may be printed there. The Dev Console can be opened on most modern browsers by pressing F12.

As a Developer

Anyone is welcome to contribute to Bitburner code. However, please read the license and the readme before doing so.

To contribute to Bitburner code, you will need to have NodeJS installed. When installing NodeJS, a utility called npm is installed as well.

What are you Allowed to Contribute?

Not all code contributions will be accepted. The safest way to ensure that you don't waste time working on something that gets rejected is to run your idea(s)/plan(s) past the developers first. You can contact him through Discord.

Otherwise, here are some general guidelines for determining what types of changes are okay to contribute:

Contributions that Will Most Likely Be Accepted

• Bug fixes
• Quality-of-life changes
  • Adding a new, commonly-requested Netscript function
  • Fixing or improving UI elements
  • Adding game settings/options
  • Adding a new Terminal command
• Code refactors that conform to good/standard practices

Contributions that will not be Accepted without prior approval

• Changes that directly affect the game's balance
• New gameplay mechanics

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How to setup fork properly

Clone and fork the game's repository by using one of these methods: web browser, GitHub Desktop, or command line.

• Web browser. Log in to your GitHub account, navigate to the game's repository, and fork the repository. Refer to this page for more detail.
• GitHub Desktop. Click on File, then click Clone repository. Click on the URL tab and type bitburner-official/bitburner-src into the text box for repository URL. Choose the path where you want to clone the repository and click the Clone button. Refer to this page for more detail.
• Command line.

# This clones the game's code repository. The output you get might vary.
$ git clone https://github.com/bitburner-official/bitburner-src.git
Cloning into 'bitburner'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 57072, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (404/404), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (205/205), done.
remote: Total 57072 (delta 210), reused 375 (delta 199), pack-reused 56668
Receiving objects: 100% (57072/57072), 339.11 MiB | 5.42 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (43708/43708), done.
Updating files: 100% (2561/2561), done.

# Change to the directory that contains your local copy.
$ cd bitburner-src

# The upstream is the repository that contains the game's source code. The
# upstream is also the place where proposed changes are merged into the game.
$ git remote rename origin upstream
Renaming remote references: 100% (8/8), done.

# The origin is your own copy or fork of the game's source code. Assume that
# your fork will be on GitHub. Change "myname" to your GitHub username. Change
# "myfork" to the name of your forked repository.
$ git remote add origin https://github.com/myname/myfork

# Now "origin" is your fork and "upstream" is where changes should be merged.
$ git remote show
origin
upstream

# You can now download all changes and branches from the upstream repository.
# The output you get might vary.
$ git fetch upstream

# Make sure you always start from "upstream/dev" to avoid merge conflicts.
$ git branch
* dev
$ git branch -r
upstream/BN14
upstream/HEAD -> upstream/dev
upstream/dev
upstream/folders
upstream/master

Development Workflow Best Practices

• Work in a new branch forked from the dev branch to isolate your new code.
  • Keep code-changes on a branch as small as possible. This makes it easier for code review. Each branch should be its own independent feature.
  • Regularly rebase your branch against dev to make sure you have the latest updates pulled.

Running locally

Install

• npm (maybe via nvm)
• Github Desktop (Windows only)
• Visual Studio Code (optional)

Inside the root of the repository run:

• npm install to install all the dependencies; and
• npm run start:dev to launch the game in dev mode.

After that you can open any browser and navigate to localhost:8000 and play the game. Saving a file will reload the game automatically.

How to build the electron app

Tested on Node v16.13.1 (LTS) on Windows. These steps only work in a Bash-like environment, like MinGW for Windows.

# Install the main game dependencies & build the app in debug mode.
$ npm install
$ npm run build:dev

# Use electron-packager to build the app to the .build/ folder.
$ npm run electron

# When launching the .exe directly, you'll need the steam_appid.txt file in the root.
# If not using Windows, change this line accordingly.
$ cp .build/bitburner-win32-x64/resources/app/steam_appid.txt .build/bitburner-win32-x64/steam_appid.txt

# And run the game...
$ .build/bitburner-win32-x64/bitburner.exe

Submitting a Pull Request

When submitting a pull request with your code contributions, please abide by the following rules:

• Work in a branch forked from dev to isolate the new code.
• Ensure you have the latest from the game's main repository.
• Rebase your branch if necessary.
• Run the game locally to test out your changes.
• When submitting the pull request, make sure that the base fork is bitburner-official/bitburner-src and the base is dev.
• If your changes affect the game's UI, attach some screenshots or GIFs showing the changes to the UI.
• If your changes affect Netscript, provide some scripts that can be used to test the Netscript changes.
• Ensure you have run npm run lint to make sure your changes conform to the rules enforced across the code base. The command will fail if any of the linters find a violation.
• Ensure you have run npm run format to make sure your changes conform to the style guide.
• Also, ensure you have run npm run test to make sure your changes pass the automated tests.
• Do not check in any bundled files (dist\*.bundle.js) or the index.html in the root of the repository. These will be updated as part of official releases.
• The title of your Pull Request will need to be formatted like MISC: Reticulated the splines, where the first word must be capitalised and relate to the kind of change being implemented. Possible examples are UI, BUGFIX, SERVERS, NETSCRIPT... You get the idea.

As a Documenter

To contribute to and view your changes to the BitBurner documentation in-game, you will need to edit the files in this folder

To make change to the in-game documentation, you will need to modify the TypeScript definitions, not the Markdown files.

We are using API Extractor (tsdoc hints) to generate the Markdown doc. Make your changes to the TypeScript definitions and then run npm run doc.

Before submitting your code for a pull request, please try to follow these rules:

• Work in a branch forked from dev to isolate the new code.
• Ensure you have the latest from the game's main repository.
• Rebase your branch if necessary.
• When submitting the pull request, make sure that the base fork is bitburner-official/bitburner-src and the base is dev.

Deploying a new version

Update the following:

• src/Constants.ts Version and LatestUpdate
• package.json version
• doc/source/conf.py version and release
• doc/source/changelog.rst
• post to Discord
• post to reddit.com/r/Bitburner