If you are looking for issues to work on, have a look at the milestones and see which one is the closest to release then look at the tickets targeted at this release.
Don't forget that Lutris is not only a desktop client, there are also a lot of issues to work on on the website and also in the build scripts repository where you can submit bash scripts for various open source games and engines we do not already have.
Another area where users can help is confirming some issues that can't be reproduced on the developers setup. Please make sure that you're able to reproduce an issue before attempting to fix it.
Note that Lutris is not a playground or a toy project. One cannot submit new features that aren't on the roadmap and submit a pull request for them without agreeing on a design first with the development team. Please get in touch with the developers before writing any code, so that you don't waste your efforts on something that isn't going to be merged. Make sure to post all the relevant information in a ticket or on the pull request. New features must at all times have a valid use case based on an actual game, be very specific about why you are implementing a feature otherwise it will get rejected. Avoid adding options in the GUI or introducing new installer directives for things that can be automated. Lutris focuses heavily on automation and on doing the right thing by default. Only introduce new options when absolutely necessary.
Contributors are welcome to suggest architectural changes or better code design if they feel like the current implementation should be improved but please take note that we're trying to stay as lean as possible. Requests introducing complex architectural changes for the sake of "modularity", "Unix pureness" or subjective aspects might not be received warmly. There are no current plans for any rewrite in another language. Once again, make sure to discuss any change with a core developer before writing a large amount of code. Keeping your pull requests as small as a possible is the best way to have them reviewed and merged quickly.
Running Lutris from a local git repository is easy, it only requires cloning the repository and executing Lutris from there.
git clone https://github.com/lutris/lutris
cd lutris
./bin/lutris -d
Make sure you have all necessary dependencies installed. It is recommended that
you keep a copy of the stable version installed with your package manager to
ensure that all dependencies are available.
If you are working on newly written code that might introduce
new dependencies, check in the package configuration files for new packages to
install. Debian based distros will have their dependencies listed
in debian/control and RPM based ones in lutris.spec.
The PyGOject introspection libraries are not regular python packages, for that reason, using a virtualenv for development is heavily discouraged. Make sure to always use PyGOject from your distribution's package manager. Also install the necessary GObject bindings as described in the INSTALL file.
To ensure you have the proper tools installed run make dev
This will install all necessary python to allow testing and validating your code.
This project includes .editorconfig so you're good to go if you're using any editor/IDE that supports this. Otherwise make sure to configure your max line length to 120, indent style to space and always end files with an empty new line.
To ensure getting your contributions getting merged faster and to avoid other
developers from going back and fixing your code, please make sure your code
passes style checks by running make sc and fixing any reported issues
before submitting your code. This runs a series of tools to apply PEP 8 coding
style conventions, sorting and grouping imports and checking for formatting issues
and other code smells.
You can help fix formatting issues or other code smells by having a look at the CodeFactor page: https://www.codefactor.io/repository/github/lutris/lutris
If your patch does not require interactions with a GUI or external processes,
please consider adding unit tests for your code. Have a look at the existing
test suite in the tests folder to see what kind of features are tested.
Be sure to test your changes thoroughly, never submit changes without running
the code. Also run the test suite and check that nothing broke.
You can run the test suite by typing make test in the source directory.
It is very important that any of your changes be tested manually, especially if you didn't add unit tests. Even trivial changes should be tested as they could potentially introduce breaking changes from a simple oversight.
Make a new git branch based of master in most cases. Send a pull request
through GitHub describing what issue the patch solves.
If the PR is related to and existing bug report, you can add (Closes #nnnn)
or (Fixes #nnnn) to your PR title or message, where nnnn is the ticket
number you're fixing.
If you contribute to Lutris on a somewhat regular basis, be sure to add yourself to the AUTHORS file!
Lutris uses Python 3 and GObject / Gtk+ 3 as its core stack, here are some links to some resources that can help you familiarize yourself with the project's code base.
[root]-+ Config files and READMEs
|
+-[bin] Main lutris executable script
+-[debian] Debian / Ubuntu packaging configuration
+-[docs] User documentation
+-[lutris]-+ Source folder
| |
| +-[gui] Gtk UI code
| +-[installer] Install script interpreter
| +-[migrations] Migration scripts for user side changes
| +-[runners] Runner code, detailing launch options and settings
| +-[services] External services (Steam, GOG, ...)
| +-[util] Generic utilities
|
+-[po] Translation files
+-[share] Lutris resources like icons, ui files, scripts
+-[tests] Unit tests