Contributing

Contributions are welcome. This document describes the workflow.

Prerequisites

Go 1.25 or newer (matches the go directive in go.mod; the toolchain directive auto-downloads go1.25.3 when needed).
golangci-lint, govulncheck, shellcheck for lint gates.
Docker for the optional BMv2 integration tests.

git clone https://github.com/zhh2001/p4runtime-go-controller.git
cd p4runtime-go-controller
make tidy
make lint
make test

Open an issue before starting non-trivial work so the design can be agreed on first.
Create a branch named feature/<topic> or fix/<topic> from main.
Commit using Conventional Commits (feat, fix, docs, test, refactor, chore, ci, build, perf).
Sign each commit (git commit -s) — the project uses the Developer Certificate of Origin.
Open a pull request against main. Rebase before requesting review. We squash-merge to keep history linear.

gofmt, goimports, and golangci-lint run must be clean. CI enforces this.
Every exported symbol has a godoc comment beginning with the symbol name.
Every blocking exported function takes ctx context.Context first.
No new package-level mutable state. No side effects inside init.
New tests use testify/require for fatal assertions and testify/assert for soft ones.

make lint test passes locally.
New behavior has tests; public API changes add an entry under [Unreleased] in CHANGELOG.md.
Exported symbols have godoc; major additions ship with an Example* function.
Commits are signed and follow Conventional Commits.

See the Code of Conduct for expected behavior in all project spaces.