markdown/ORFS_docs/general/GettingInvolved.md

# Getting Involved

Thank you for taking the time to read this document and to contribute.
The OpenROAD project will not reach all of its objectives without help!

Possible ways to contribute in the scope of OpenROAD Flow:

- Open-source PDK information
- Open-source Designs
- Useful scripts
- Star our project and repos so we can see the number of people
    who are interested

## Licensing Contributions

As much as possible, all contributions should be licensed using the BSD3
license. You can propose another license if you must, but contributions
made with BSD3 fit best with the spirit of OpenROAD's permissive open-source
philosophy. We do have exceptions in the project, but over time we hope
that all contributions will be BSD3, or some other permissive license such as MIT
or Apache2.0.

## Contributing Open Source PDK information and Designs

If you have new design or PDK information to contribute, please add this
to the repo
[OpenROAD-flow-scripts](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/).
In the
[flow directory](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/tree/master/flow)
you will see a directory for
[designs](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/tree/master/flow/designs)
with Makefiles to run them, and one for PDK
[platforms](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/tree/master/flow/platforms)
used by the designs. If you add a new PDK platform, be sure to add at
least one design that uses it.

## Contributing Scripts and Code

We follow the [Google C++ style guide](https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html).
If you find code in our project that does *not* follow this guide, then within each file that
you edit, follow the style in that file.

Please pay careful attention to the
[tool checklist](https://openroad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/contrib/DeveloperGuide.html#tool-checklist) for all code. If you want
to add or improve functionality in OpenROAD, please start with the
top-level [app](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/) repo. You
can see in the `src` directory that submodules exist pointing to tested
versions of the other relevant repos in the project. Please look at the
tool workflow in the developer guide [document](DeveloperGuide.md)
to work with the app and its submodule repos in an efficient way.

Please run clang-format on all the C++ source files that you change, before
committing. In the root directory of the OpenROAD repository there is the
file `.clang-format` that defines all coding formatting rules.

Please pay attention to the
[test directory](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/tree/master/test)
and be sure to add tests for any code changes that you make, using open-source
PDK and design information. We provide the `nangate45` PDK in
the OpenROAD-flow-scripts repo to help with this. Pull requests with
code changes are unlikely to be accepted without accompanying test
cases. There are many
[examples](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/blob/master/test/gcd_nangate45.tcl)
tests. Each repo has a test directory as well with tests you should run
and add to if you modify something in one of the submodules.

For changes that claim to improve QoR or PPA, please run many tests and
ensure that the improvement is not design-specific. There are designs in
the
[OpenROAD-flow-scripts](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/)
repo which can be used unless the improvement is technology-specific.

Do not add runtime or build dependencies without serious thought. For a
project like OpenROAD with many application subcomponents, the software
architecture can quickly get out of control. Changes with lots of new
dependencies which are not necessary are less likely to be integrated.

If you want to add Tcl code to define a new tool command, look at [pdngen](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/tree/master/src/pdn)
as an example of how to do so. Take a look at the
[CMakeLists file](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/blob/master/src/CMakeLists.txt)
which automatically sources the Tcl code and the
[Tcl file](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/blob/master/src/pdn/src/pdn.tcl)
itself.

To accept contributions, we require each commit to be made with a DCO (Developer
Certificate of Origin) attached.
When you commit you add the `-s` flag to your commit. For example:

``` shell
git commit -s -m "test dco with -s"
```

This will append a statement to your commit comment that attests to the DCO. GitHub
has built in the `-s` option to its command line since use of this is so
pervasive. The promise is very basic, certifying that you know that you
have the right to commit the code. Please read the  [full statement
here](https://developercertificate.org/).

## Questions

Please refer to our [FAQs](../user/FAQS.md).