Contributing

Thanks for your interest in contributing to cmakefmt. This page covers the contributor workflow: setting up your environment, building from source, running tests, setting up hooks, and keeping docs accurate.

Feedback and Bug Reports

Bug reports, feature requests, and questions are tracked on GitHub Issues:

github.com/cmakefmt/cmakefmt/issues

When filing a bug, include the output of cmakefmt --version, the command you ran, and a minimal CMake file that reproduces the problem. For formatting behaviour questions, the Playground is a quick way to share a reproducible example.

Dev Environment Setup

The repository ships a mise config that pins and installs every required tool — Rust, Node, Python, and all cargo/pip tools — in one step.

Install mise:

# macOS
brew install mise

# macOS / Linux / WSL
curl https://mise.run | sh

Then activate it in your shell (one-time):

# zsh
echo 'eval "$(mise activate zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

# bash
echo 'eval "$(mise activate bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Then from the repo root:

mise install

This installs Rust (stable), Node 22, Python 3.12, cargo-audit, cargo-deny, cargo-llvm-cov, wasm-pack, pre-commit, reuse, and bump-my-version — and automatically installs the pre-commit and pre-push hooks as a post-install step.

Building From Source

Clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/cmakefmt/cmakefmt.git
cd cmakefmt
cargo build

Install locally for manual testing:

cargo install --path .

Run the full test suite:

cargo test

Pre-commit Hooks

Hooks are installed automatically by mise install. To reinstall manually:

pre-commit install
pre-commit install --hook-type pre-push

Useful spot checks before pushing:

pre-commit run --all-files
cmakefmt --staged --check

The hook set covers code-quality checks, security scanning (cargo audit, cargo deny), and REUSE/license metadata validation.

Before/After Examples in Docs

When writing or updating documentation that shows a before/after formatting example, always verify the output using the actual CLI or the Playground before committing. Never write an expected “After” from memory — the formatter’s decisions (inline vs. hanging vs. vertical) depend on line-width and command spec, and can be surprising.

# Quick verification from the command line
echo 'your_cmake_snippet()' | cmakefmt -

Local Docs Preview

Preview the published docs locally:

cd docs
npm install
npm run dev

Then open the local URL that Astro prints, usually http://localhost:4321.

Changelog

Add an entry to the ## Unreleased section of CHANGELOG.md for any user-visible change. The docs site changelog is kept in sync automatically by scripts/sync-changelog.py.