.. Copyright 2018 The Cartographer Authors

.. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
   you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
   You may obtain a copy of the License at

..      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

.. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
   limitations under the License.

================
Getting involved
================

Cartographer is developed in the open and allows anyone to contribute to the project.
There are multiple ways to get involved!

Twice a month, the project hosts "Open House Hangouts" sessions that are essentially meetings open to everyone to join in.
The call typically recaps the recent and ongoing development around Cartographer and Cartographer ROS.
The developers are then open to questions from the community, this is a great time to ask about contribution ideas.
If you don't feel like talking or being seen, you are free to join anyway and skulk!
The slides are also made available after each session but there is no video recording.

If you want to stay tuned with announcements (such as new major releases or new open house sessions), you can join `the Cartographer mailing list`_ although you can not interact with this mailing list anymore.

.. _the Cartographer mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-cartographer

If you think you've found an issue in Cartographer, you are welcome to open a `GitHub issue`_ but don't forget to provide a way to reproduce your bug!
Typically, join a ``.bag`` and a link to a fork of the ``cartographer_ros`` repository containing your configuration and launch files.

.. _GitHub issue: https://github.com/googlecartographer/cartographer/issues

If you have an idea of a significant change that should be documented and discussed before finding its way into Cartographer, you should submit it as a pull request to `the RFCs repository`_ first.
Simpler changes can also be discussed in GitHub issues so that developers can help you get things right from the first try.

.. _the RFCs repository: https://github.com/googlecartographer/rfcs

If you want to contribute code or documentation, this is done through `GitHub pull requests`_.
However, make sure you have signed (online) the `Contributor License Agreement`_ first!

.. _GitHub pull requests: https://github.com/googlecartographer/cartographer/pulls
.. _Contributor License Agreement: https://github.com/googlecartographer/cartographer/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
