Skip to main content

🤝 Get involved

Want to help us make this project even more amazing? Great! Contributing is easy, and on this page you'll find a quick guide on how to do it. 👇🏻

There are basically 3 places where you can help:

🐞 Spotting bugs​

Have you found a bug / something to improve? Create an issue in the corresponding repository (if it doesn't exist yet) so that we can start working on it! 💪🏻

If you are not sure where the issue belongs, you can just create it in the components repository and we'll redirect it to the right place!

🍻 Visiting the community​

Our community is the heart of our project. It's the place where all BIM software developers meet, share their wins and learn from each other.

You can be part of it by:

  • Showing us what you built with our libraries!

  • Answering questions of other BIM software developers.

  • Sharing resources / tutorials.

  • Starting interesting debates and conversations.

👨🏻‍💻 Coding​

What you'll need

The knowledge you need to help us depend on which part of the libraries you want to help us with. In general, basic knowledge of web development, TypeScript and Three.js should suffice. If you are not sure, don't hesitate to ask us!

This includes adding features and enhancing existing ones, fixing bugs or writing docs. The steps to contribute are the following:

🙏🏻 1. Ask first​

We have been creating and maintaining our libraries for years for free, and there is nothing we appreciate more than people who want to help us. 💕

Meritocracy over anarchy

At That Open Company we believe in a merit-based governance model over the libraries. That means that the people who have helped the most and for the longest have the most decision-making power over them.

Therefore, if you use the libraries and miss something, or just want to be part of the project, we strongly recommend that you ask first. It can save yourself days of work doing a PR that might be rejected by the maintainers. Also, if you ask, we'll gladly help you out in everything you need to start developing. 🚀

You can ask by opening a feature issue in any of our repositories or adding a comment to any existing one. That way, you open a friendly discussion where people can participate and maintainers decide. If you are not sure where the issue belongs, you can just create it in the components repository and we'll redirect it to the right place!

🚀 2. Start coding​

Once you have asked, and got a positive answer from one of the maintainers, you can start coding! To add / edit code of the library, you will need to:

  1. Install yarn using npm i -g yarn.

  2. Create a fork of the repository.

  3. Clone your fork to your local machine.

  4. Create a branch to work on that specific issue, and link that branch to the issue.

  5. Use the command yarn install to install all the dependencies of that library.

  6. Use the command yarn dev to run a local server where you can see the changes you make in the corresponding example.ts files. To see the changes, you have 2 options:

    1. Run yarn build in the corresponding package.
    2. To see the changes in real time, you can substitute the import statement path of the library by ../... For instance, in an example.ts in the @thatopen/components package, you can substitute the line import * as OBC from @thatopen/components by import * as OBC from ../.., and you'll see the changes you make to the code without needing to rebuild. Don't forget to change this statement back when you are done!

  7. Work on your fork of the repository locally. Please follow the basic clean rules!

  8. After making all your commits with the changes, run yarn build-libraries to check that you haven't created any errors in the examples.

  9. Create a pull request. The name should follow the conventional commits convention. If you are not sure, check out the title past pull requests!

Then, someone from our team will reviewed it and, if everything is ok, merge it. That's it! Easy, right? 😋 We'll help you get started and give you anything you needs, so don't hesitate to reach out!