CONTRIBUTING.md
## General guidelines for contributing code
You are very welcome to contribute to the project! Pull requests welcome, as well as issues or plain messages.
Respect the below and I will be happy to merge your work and credit you for it.
### Style and structure
- Follow the style and conventions already in place.
- _As always, write clean, easy-to-read code. Prefer being slightly more verbose and semantic than being "efficient" and terse_, if such a choice is necessary. Write as if someone is going to contribute on top of your code base tomorrow without knowing you or your work.
- Follow importing by highest-level components at top, and detail-oriented components at bottom, as per:
0. External package imports
1. Entities
2. Contracts
3. Use cases or other high-level files
4. Same-level files
5. Frameworks
6. Messages, errors, warnings (separated)
### Tests
- **Always include tests for additions or changes**. Aim for 100% coverage, but set a minimum bar to cover at least the main functionality. `mikrocompare` should ideally have total code coverage of 95% or more. Your contribution will affect that score, so aim to keep it high(er)! :)
- It's encouraged to place any test data in the `testdata/` folder if it is not easily handled within the test itself.
- **Always check that all tests (including your new ones) are passing before making a pull request**.
### Error handling
- Make sure to handle errors and do any relevant validation logic. Also always output meaningful, actionable messages/warnings/errors to the user.
- Avoid inlining messages, errors or warnings. Instead place those in the dedicated files for each of the mentioned concerns, and read them from there.
### Documentation
- Document your code with JSDoc at the start of your code.
- Add any inline comments as needed for anything that is not self-evident.
- Update the README with any user-facing changes, such as new CLI commands or arguments.