woocommerce/plugins/woocommerce-admin/CONTRIBUTING.md

# Contributing to WooCommerce Admin

Hi! Thank you for your interest in contributing to WooCommerce Admin. We appreciate it.

There are many ways to contribute – reporting bugs, adding translations, feature suggestions, and fixing bugs.

## Reporting Bugs, Asking Questions, Sending Suggestions

Open [a GitHub issue](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-admin/issues/new/choose), that's all. If you have write access, add any appropriate labels.

If you're filing a bug, specific steps to reproduce are always helpful. Please include what you expected to see and what happened instead.

## Localizing WooCommerce Admin

To translate WooCommerce Admin in your locale or language, [select your locale here](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/woocommerce-admin) and translate *Development* (which contains the plugin's string) and/or *Development Readme* (please translate what you see in the Details tab of the [plugin page](https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-admin/)).

A Global Translation Editor (GTE) or Project Translation Editor (PTE) with suitable rights will process your translations in due time.

Language packs are automatically generated once 95% of the plugin's strings are translated and approved for a locale.

### Testing translations in development without language packs

1. Requires `WP-CLI` version 2.1.0 or greater.
1. Generate a translation file with `npm run i18n xx_YY` (Where xx_YY is your locale, like it_IT).
1. Generate needed JSON files for JavaScript-based strings: `npm run i18n:json`.
1. Generate needed `woocommerce-admin-xx_YY.mo` file using your translation tool.
1. Move `.mo` and `.json` files to `/wp-content/languages/plugins`.

## We're Here To Help

We encourage you to ask for help. We want your first experience with WooCommerce Admin to be a good one, so don't be shy. If you're wondering why something is the way it is, or how a decision was made, you can tag issues with [Type] Question or prefix them with “Question:”

## Contributing Code

If you're a first-time code contributor to the repository, here's a quick guide to get started:

1. Fork the repo to your own account.
2. Clone your fork into the `wp-content/plugins` directory of your preferred WordPress development environment.
3. Don't forget to create a branch to keep your changes. (`git checkout -b add/my-cool-thing`).
4. From the `woocommerce-admin` plugin directory, build with `npm install` and `npm start`.
5. Visit your dev environment in the browser to enable the `WooCommerce Admin` plugin and try it out.

Tips:
- Try to keep each PR small (around 200-250 lines or less, if you can), and having multiple very small commits in each PR is preferable to one larger commit (especially if the PR is larger).
- Don't combine code formatting changes with meaningful ones. If there's formatting work that needs to be done en masse, do it all in one PR, then open another one for meaningful code changes.
- Add unit tests to your PR for better code coverage and review.

After you've made your updates, you're ready to commit:

1. Run a complete build via `npm run build`.
2. Do a `composer install` to ensure PHP dependencies can run on the pre-commit hook.
3. Create your commit. Write a descriptive, but short first line (e.g. "Reports: Reticulate the splines"), and add more details below. If your commit addresses a github issue, reference it by number here (e.g. "This commit fixes issue #123 by reticulating all the splines.")
4. Push the branch up to your local fork, then create a PR via the GitHub web interface.

## PHP Unit tests

### Setting up PHP unit tests using VVV

1. SSH into the Vagrant box:
    1. `cd` down to the Vagrant root (where `www` lives) 
    2. `vagrant ssh`
2. `cd /srv/www/<name of wp install>/woocommerce-admin`
3. `bin/install-wp-tests.sh wc-admin-tests root root`

### Running tests

1. SSH into the Vagrant box (`vagrant ssh`)
2. `cd /srv/www/<name of wp install>/woocommerce-admin`
3. `./vendor/bin/phpunit` to actually run the test suite

## Helper Scripts

There are a number of helper scripts exposed via our `package.json` (below list is not exhaustive, you can view the [`package.json` file directly to see all](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-admin/blob/main/package.json)):

 - `npm run lint` : Run eslint over the javascript files
 - `npm run i18n` : A multi-step process, used to create a pot file from both the JS and PHP gettext calls. First it runs `i18n:js`, which creates a temporary `.pot` file from the JS files. Next it runs `i18n:php`, which converts that `.pot` file to a PHP file. Lastly, it runs `i18n:pot`, which creates the final `.pot` file from all the PHP files in the plugin (including the generated one with the JS strings).
 - `npm test` : Run the JS test suite
 - `npm run docs`: Runs the script for generating/updating docs.

## Debugging

### Debugging synced lookup information:

To debug synced lookup information in the database, you can bypass the action scheduler and immediately sync order and customer information by using the `woocommerce_analytics_disable_action_scheduling` hook.

```php
add_filter( 'woocommerce_analytics_disable_action_scheduling', '__return_true' );
```

### Using `debug` package.

Currently, the [debug package](https://github.com/visionmedia/debug) is utilized to provide additional debugging for various systems. This tool outputs additional debugging information in the browser console when it is activated.

To activate, open up your browser console and add this:

```js
localStorage.setItem( 'debug', 'wc-admin:*' );
```

## License

WooCommerce Admin is licensed under [GNU General Public License v3 (or later)](/license.txt).

All materials contributed should be compatible with the GPLv3. This means that if you own the material, you agree to license it under the GPLv3 license. If you are contributing code that is not your own, such as adding a component from another Open Source project, or adding an `npm` package, you need to make sure you follow these steps:

1. Check that the code has a license. If you can't find one, you can try to contact the original author and get permission to use, or ask them to release under a compatible Open Source license.
2. Check the license is compatible with [GPLv3](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses), note that the Apache 2.0 license is *not* compatible.