# Contributing

We’re excited to collaborate with the community and look forward to the many improvements you can make to OpenTimelineIO!

## Contributor License Agreement

Before contributing code to OpenTimelineIO, we ask that you sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA). At the root of the repo you can find the two possible CLAs:

• [OTIO_CLA_Corporate.pdf](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenTimelineIO/raw/master/OTIO_CLA_Corporate.pdf): please sign this one for corporate use

• [OTIO_CLA_Individual.pdf](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenTimelineIO/raw/master/OTIO_CLA_Individual.pdf): please sign this one if you’re an individual contributor

Once your CLA is signed, send it to opentimelineio-cla@pixar.com (please make sure to include your github username) and wait for confirmation that we’ve received it. After that, you can submit pull requests.

## Coding Conventions Please follow the coding convention and style in each file and in each library when adding new files.

## Git Workflow Here is the workflow we recommend for working on OpenTimelineIO if you intend on contributing changes back:

Post an issue on github to let folks know about the feature or bug that you found, and mention that you intend to work on it. That way, if someone else is working on a similar project, you can collaborate, or you can get early feedback which can sometimes save time.

Use the github website to fork your own private repository.

Clone your fork to your local machine, like this:

` git clone https://github.com/you/OpenTimelineIO.git `

Add the primary OpenTimelineIO repo as upstream to make it easier to update your remote and local repos with the latest changes:

` cd OpenTimelineIO git remote add upstream https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenTimelineIO.git `

Now you fetch the latest changes from Pixar’s OpenTimelineIO repo like this:

` git fetch upstream `

All the development should happen against the master branch. We recommend you create a new branch for each feature or fix that you’d like to make and give it a descriptive name so that you can remember it later. You can checkout a new branch and create it simultaneously like this:

` git checkout -b mybugfix upstream/master `

Now you can work in your branch locally.

Once you are happy with your change, you can verify that the change didn’t cause tests failures by running tests like this:

` make test make lint `

If all the tests pass and you’d like to send your change in for consideration, push it to your remote repo:

` git push origin mybugfix `

Now your remote branch will have your mybugfix branch, which you can now pull request (to OpenTimelineIO’s master branch) using the github UI.

Please make sure that your pull requests are clean. Use the rebase and squash git facilities as needed to ensure that the pull request is as clean as possible.