Thank you for considering contributing to Tezos. This is a large codebase and due to the on-chain governance nature of Tezos we use some non-standard workflows.
There are two classes of changes and both are treated differently:
- Changes to the shell implementation
- Changes to the protocol implementation
The shell is not part of the consensus state machine and hence every full node can have a different/custom version of the shell while still running the same protocol. A good example is how Ethereum has Parity and Geth, both are different shells but they are running the same protocol.
Making changes to the shell is straightforward. Fork this repo, and then branch
from master. Once you have made your changes please submit a merge request on
gitlab against the master branch.
The protocol is the Tezos state machine and run in consensus. It is fully deterministic and every node in the network has to arrive at the same output given the same input.
Making changes to the protocol is slightly different than one would expect. You
branch from the latest master branch, make changes to the protocol, and then
push them to your own branch in your fork. Please start from proto_alpha, and
then follow the naming convention of proto_00*_*** by renaming the former
folder. You may create a merge request against the master branch, but it will
get merged only once the network has voted on your proposal and accepted it.
After it has gone through the Tezos governance process it will also get merged
into zeronet for testing and finally into mainnet for deployment.
Here you can find more documentation on the development flow and here you can find more information on the governance and voting process.
Hacking on Tezos is awesome and everyone is welcome. If you discover inconsistencies in this document please fix them to make it easier for the next person. Furthermore, please don't hesitate to ask questions, we don't bite.
To get more details on the contribution process, check out the online contributing guidelines.