benilla-octo/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

benilla is a faithful 1.12.1 client. It is the foundation people build on, not the place to get creative: a change is accepted when it makes benilla more like 1.12.1 or fixes a bug, with evidence from the reference, in one small piece, with the gates green. Everything else is a fork, and forks are welcome.

Where to start

The issues the maintainers file are checked against 1.12.1 first: each says what 1.12.1 does, what benilla does instead, and where in the code, and any of them is a place to start. One labelled in progress is taken: someone is working on it or a pull request is open for it, so pick another. Once you start one, open a draft pull request that says Fixes #N as soon as you have a first commit, so the issue shows it is taken.

What gets in

• A fix for a bug, with how to see it before and after.
• A step closer to 1.12.1: a missing packet, verb, window, effect or behaviour, done the way the real client does it.
• A correction where benilla and the reference disagree, with the reference fact stated.

What does not

• Features 1.12.1 does not have, and behaviour changed because it seems better. A deviation from the reference is the maintainer's call and is recorded where it lives; a pull request is not the place to propose one.
• Anything from a WoW install: art, models, sounds, maps, data. The one exception is interface code (FrameXML and GlueXML), and only through the migration recipe in docs/METHOD.md.
• Big or mixed changes. One change per pull request, small enough to read in one sitting.

How a change is judged

1. scripts/gates.sh is green: fmt, clippy with warnings denied, the workspace tests (once with the client data, once without, so a test that reads the install has to declare it), the doc-link and render-pass lints, the player build with its own tests, and the engine boot checks. A pull request from a fork runs the ones that need neither the install nor a display in CI, on Linux; the rest run on the maintainer's machine before it lands.
2. The reference fact is stated: what 1.12.1 does, and where that is known from (the client's behaviour you observed, a DBC field, a FrameXML line, a packet capture). The names and shapes under reference/ are the surface benilla tracks.
3. A comment where it matters, one line, saying what the code does and the 1.12 fact behind it. No history.
4. The commit message says what changed, for a player or a developer, in one line.

After you open it

A maintainer reads it, checks it against the reference, runs it and finishes it here: a rebase onto main, a fix, a test or a comment, added as commits on top of yours on your branch, so leave "Allow edits by maintainers" ticked. It lands as one squash-merged commit with you as its author. When what would land is mostly ours, we land our own version with you as a co-author and close yours with a note, and when main already has the fix, we close yours and say where. One that is out of scope is closed with the reason.

Setting up

• The toolchain. Stable Rust (rust-toolchain.toml adds clippy and rustfmt) and a C compiler, because the client's Lua is vendored and built from source. On macOS the Xcode command line tools, which also supply libclang for the audio bindings; on Linux the ALSA and udev development packages and pkg-config. python3 runs two of the gates.
• A build cache (optional). sccache serves a dependency rebuild after a branch switch or a git clean from cache instead of recompiling it. scripts/check.sh, scripts/gates.sh and scripts/smoke.sh use it automatically when it is on PATH; for the play loop, . scripts/sccache.sh && cargo play, or scripts/sccache.sh cargo play, wraps one command. Without it a clone builds exactly as before; an existing RUSTC_WRAPPER wins and BENILLA_NO_SCCACHE=1 skips it. It does not wrap the C compiler, so the vendored Lua build is not cached by it.
• A 1.12.1 install of your own. WOW_DATA=<its Data folder>, or a WoW link at the repo root, which only a dev build sees: the player build looks for Data/ or WoW/Data/ beside the binary. benilla reads the install and never writes into it. WOW_DATA= (set, empty) means "no install": the client refuses to start (an error dialog, or stderr alone in an unattended run) and the no-install tests run on a machine that has one.
• Without the install, green is hollow. Well over a thousand tests read the install and skip when it is absent, and a few dozen more read a corpus of vanilla addons (BENILLA_ADDON_CORPUS=<a folder of addons>, or a wow-addons-vanilla link at the root), third-party content that is not in this repo. scripts/gates.sh and scripts/check.sh print how many tests skipped and why. Where the data is, BENILLA_REQUIRE_DATA=1 turns a skip into a failure, and the gates set it themselves when the install and the corpus both resolve.
• A server to test against. Any 1.12.1 server; WOW_HOST names it (default localhost:3724). A scripted run has no default account: WOW_USER, WOW_PASS and WOW_CHAR name a test account on your server whose login kicks nobody, all three, either in the environment or in a .probe-identity file at the repo root (one per line, never committed), and scripts/smoke.sh (the live login gate) refuses without them. WOW_CHAR must already be on the account, since the client creates a character only when asked: WOW_PROBE_CHARCREATE=<name> WOW_PROBE_CHARCREATE_KEEP=1, run without WOW_CHAR, makes it. The probes drive the body with GM commands, so give that account the top GM level.
• Running it unattended. The rules are docs/METHOD.md, "The local server"; these are the switches.
  • WOW_UNATTENDED=1 reconnects instead of waiting at a dialog, and exits non-zero on a login it cannot pass. WOW_NOSOUND=1 runs silent. A capture (WOW_CAPTURE) is both, and a rig (WOW_RIG) is unattended. WOW_ALLOW_ACCOUNT=1 overrides the account guard.
  • On vmangos, WOW_RIG="tauren druid 60 gear:heal-preraid-bis spec:heal-preraid-bis at:ThunderBluff" finds or creates that character on the account and applies the server's premade sets (WOW_RIG="gear:?" lists them). WOW_PROBE_CHAT="<command>" sends one GM command and logs the reply as net: server says. An account named probe and digits is shielded: every world entry sends .cheat god on, .die clears it for a death test, and WOW_GOD=off leaves it off.
  • A trace is WOW_MOVE_TRACE=<file>, filtered with WOW_MOVE_TRACE_TAGS ("move,snd,in") and ended by WOW_PROBE_EXIT_AT=<seconds>; grep it for the rly and snd lines.
  • A capture runs through scripts/visual.sh, whose recipe is the header of crates/benilla-app/src/capture/mod.rs. Pixel questions go through benilla-visual crop, series and hotspot.
• The loop. cargo play builds and runs the play profile. scripts/check.sh verifies a round of work; scripts/gates.sh is the full chain, and it opens a window for the engine boot checks, so it needs a display. Work on a branch.

Reporting a bug

Open an issue: what you did, what you saw and what 1.12.1 does instead, with the benilla build line from the start of the terminal output, your platform and the server you ran on. Questions and ideas are welcome there or on the Discord linked from the README.

Working with an AI agent is expected. The agent reads AGENTS.md, and the same rules bind it.