# Contributing

We welcome contributions to LocalStack! Please refer to the following sections to better understand how LocalStack works internally, how to set up local development environments, and how to contribute to the codebase.

## Sections

- [Contribution Guidelines](#contribution-guidelines)
- [Development Environment Setup](/docs/development-environment-setup/README.md)
- [LocalStack Concepts](/docs/localstack-concepts/README.md)
- [Testing](/docs/testing/README.md)

## Contribution Guidelines

We welcome feedback, bug reports, and pull requests!

For pull requests (PRs), please stick to the following guidelines:

* Before submitting a PR, verify that [an issue](https://github.com/localstack/localstack/issues) exists that describes the bug fix or feature you want to contribute. If there's no issue yet, please [create one](https://github.com/localstack/localstack/issues/new/choose).
* Fork localstack on your GitHub user account, make code changes there, and then create a PR against main localstack repository.
* Add tests for any new features or bug fixes. Ideally, each PR increases the test coverage. Please read our [integration testing](testing/integration-tests/README.md) and [parity testing](testing/parity-testing/README.md) guides on how to write tests for AWS services.
* Follow the existing code style. Run `make format` and `make lint` before checking in your code.
  * Refer to [Development Environment Setup](development-environment-setup/README.md) if your local testing environment is not yet properly set up.
* Document newly introduced methods and classes with pydoc, and add inline comments to code that is not self-documenting.
* Separate unrelated changes into multiple PRs.
* When creating a PR, classify the size of your change with setting a semver label:
  * `semver: patch`: Small, non-breaking changes.
  * `semver: minor`: Bigger, non-breaking changes (like features or bigger refactorings).
  * `semver: major`: Breaking changes (no matter how big).

Please note that by contributing any code or documentation to this repository (by raising PRs, or otherwise) you explicitly agree to the [**Contributor License Agreement**](../.github/CLA.md).
