mirror of https://github.com/xiph/flac
75 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
75 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
Thanks for considering contributing to the FLAC project!
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Contributing to FLAC is possible in many ways. Among them are
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- Reporting bugs or other issues at https://github.com/xiph/flac/issues
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- Submitting patches at https://github.com/xiph/flac/pulls
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- Testing FLAC playing devices and software at
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https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=FLAC_decoder_testbench
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General communication not specific to issues is generally done through
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the FLAC mailing lists:
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- For user questions and discussions:
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https://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac
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- For developer questions and discussions:
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https://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-dev
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## Goals
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Since FLAC is an open-source project, it's important to have a set of
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goals that everyone works to. They may change slightly from time to time
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but they're a good guideline. Changes should be in line with the goals
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and should not attempt to embrace any of the anti-goals.
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**Goals**
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- FLAC should be and stay an open format with an open-source reference
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implementation.
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- FLAC should be lossless. This seems obvious but lossy compression
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seems to creep into every audio codec. This goal also means that flac
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should stay archival quality and be truly lossless for all input.
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Testing of releases should be thorough.
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- FLAC should yield respectable compression, on par or better than other
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lossless codecs.
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- FLAC should allow at least realtime decoding on even modest hardware.
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- FLAC should support fast sample-accurate seeking.
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- FLAC should allow gapless playback of consecutive streams. This follows from the lossless goal.
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- The FLAC project owes a lot to the many people who have advanced the
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audio compression field so freely, and aims also to contribute through
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the open-source development of new ideas.
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**Anti-goals**
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- Lossy compression. There are already many suitable lossy formats (Ogg
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Vorbis, MP3, etc.).
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- Copy prevention, DRM, etc. There is no intention to add any copy
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prevention methods. Of course, we can't stop someone from encrypting a
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FLAC stream in another container (e.g. the way Apple encrypts AAC in
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MP4 with FairPlay), that is the choice of the user.
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## Contributing patches
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Contributions to FLAC should be licensed with the same license as the
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part of the FLAC project the contribution belongs to. These are
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- libFLAC and libFLAC++ are licensed under Xiph.org's
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BSD-like license (see COPYING.Xiph), so contributions to these
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libraries should also be licensed under this license, otherwise they
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cannot be accepted
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- the flac and metaflac command line programs are licensed under GPLv2,
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see COPYING.GPL
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- the helper libraries for flac and metaflac (which are in src/share)
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are licensed under varying licenses, see the license preamble for each
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file to see how they are licensed
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Patches can be contributed through GitHub as a Pull Request.
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Alternatively you can supply patches through the mailing list.
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## Code style
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FLAC does have its own peculiar coding style that does not seem to fit
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general categories. You can use `git clang-format` to have your patch
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auto-formatted similar to the rest of the code.
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