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author | Abseil Team <absl-team@google.com> | 2018-10-15T18·30-0700 |
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committer | Xiaoyi Zhang <zhangxy988@gmail.com> | 2018-10-15T19·32-0400 |
commit | 5b70a8910b2e6fb0ce5193a41873139a126d2f7f (patch) | |
tree | 1a4a99b5c877f0b69bd8756ea1518dd16f09dd2b /CONTRIBUTING.md | |
parent | a00bdd176d66ef0b417d9576052a19091fbdf891 (diff) |
Export of internal Abseil changes.
-- f4e870453d02106c2685e0461816469a4704ad25 by Abseil Team <absl-team@google.com>: Expose TimeZone::NextTransition() and PrevTransition() now that we have absl::CivilSecond support in time.h. Note that these are for informational purposes only. General time code should not care when offset changes occur. PiperOrigin-RevId: 217177292 -- cfadd275c7333f7c27c4d682b9d167010d874e69 by Abseil Team <absl-team@google.com>: Import of CCTZ from GitHub. PiperOrigin-RevId: 217153577 -- 6ff5b8c61a1239b9c0478a7c62bcd2844b310307 by Jon Cohen <cohenjon@google.com>: Fix code examples in hash_testing.h. Includes random clang-format changes. PiperOrigin-RevId: 216898995 -- de124129d27f4627dabe193a10bf106a11783fba by Shaindel Schwartz <shaindel@google.com>: Add contribution guidelines describing how we decide whether to include an API in Abseil. PiperOrigin-RevId: 216886943 GitOrigin-RevId: f4e870453d02106c2685e0461816469a4704ad25 Change-Id: Ib9c6706f5bf931b71c0357bf1342053a3bee8ff7
Diffstat (limited to 'CONTRIBUTING.md')
-rw-r--r-- | CONTRIBUTING.md | 47 |
1 files changed, 47 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md index 40351ddcfaa1..f4cb4a29ed07 100644 --- a/CONTRIBUTING.md +++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md @@ -18,6 +18,53 @@ You generally only need to submit a CLA once, so if you've already submitted one (even if it was for a different project), you probably don't need to do it again. +## Contribution Guidelines + +Potential contributors sometimes ask us if the Abseil project is the appropriate +home for their utility library code or for specific functions implementing +missing portions of the standard. Often, the answer to this question is "no". +We’d like to articulate our thinking on this issue so that our choices can be +understood by everyone and so that contributors can have a better intuition +about whether Abseil might be interested in adopting a new library. + +### Priorities + +Although our mission is to augment the C++ standard library, our goal is not to +provide a full forward-compatible implementation of the latest standard. For us +to consider a library for inclusion in Abseil, it is not enough that a library +is useful. We generally choose to release a library when it meets at least one +of the following criteria: + +* **Widespread usage** - Using our internal codebase to help gauge usage, most + of the libraries we've released have tens of thousands of users. +* **Anticipated widespread usage** - Pre-adoption of some standard-compliant + APIs may not have broad adoption initially but can be expected to pick up + usage when it replaces legacy APIs. `absl::from_chars`, for example, + replaces existing code that converts strings to numbers and will therefore + likely see usage growth. +* **High impact** - APIs that provide a key solution to a specific problem, + such as `absl::FixedArray`, have higher impact than usage numbers may signal + and are released because of their importance. +* **Direct support for a library that falls under one of the above** - When we + want access to a smaller library as an implementation detail for a + higher-priority library we plan to release, we may release it, as we did + with portions of `absl/meta/type_traits.h`. One consequence of this is that + the presence of a library in Abseil does not necessarily mean that other + similar libraries would be a high priority. + +### API Freeze Consequences + +Via the +[Abseil Compatibility Guidelines](https://abseil.io/about/compatibility), we +have promised a large degree of API stability. In particular, we will not make +backward-incompatible changes to released APIs without also shipping a tool or +process that can upgrade our users' code. We are not yet at the point of easily +releasing such tools. Therefore, at this time, shipping a library establishes an +API contract which is borderline unchangeable. (We can add new functionality, +but we cannot easily change existing behavior.) This constraint forces us to +very carefully review all APIs that we ship. + + ## Coding Style To keep the source consistent, readable, diffable and easy to merge, we use a |