Contributing
============

OpenDCS started as a purely government project, mostly through contracts.
It is now developed by a combination of volunteers, government staff, and private companies.

It is our goal to accept any meaningfuly and well developed, change that users required; however,
since users will come to the OpenDCS team for support and help it *must* be something we feel comfortable maintaing.
The best way to establish this comfort is to make sure appropriate unit tests are included.


OpenDCS - the original suite
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If you want to contribute to OpenDCS see https://github.com/opendcs/opendcs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md 
for instructions.

We gladly accept issue reports and pull requests for smaller change.



Contributing new projects or large changes
##########################################

If you have an idea but it will involve larger changes, please open an issue first. Depending on the exact
work it may be either placed in it's own branch or get a new repo, either way we ask that you continuously update
the code for others to see.

If the change will be going into OpenDCS proper (the https://github.com/opendcs/opendcs repository) 
opening a draft PR will be required and continuous updates expected. Additionally it will be the developers 
responsibility to keep up-to-date with the target branch, either with a merge or rebase.

Contributing to other organization repositories
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If you are contributing to one of the other repositories contained in our github organization please review the
project's CONTRIBUTING.md file for any specific requirements.