How To Contribute ================= pVACtools is an open-source project. We enthusiastically welcome outside contributions. The `pVACtools source code `_ is hosted on GitHub. Code changes are made via pull requests to the main repository. The `First Contributions `_ project has a neat guide of all the steps involved. One thing to note is that the pVACtools project uses ``staging`` and ``hotfix`` branches to manage major/minor and patch releases, respectively. Depending on the type of your contribution you will need to branch your change branch off of either ``staging`` for new features or ``hotfix`` for bugfixes and use one these two branches as the base branch of your pull request. Pull requests should never be made to the ``master`` branch. The pVACtools projects uses milestones to assign issues to specific releases. Each milestone is named with a version number, which indicates the version of the upcoming release. Upcoming milestones/versions can be found `here `_. An issue in an open milestone may be closed if the respective feature has been addressed (i.e. added via a merged pull request), even though the release for the open milestone has not been made yet. Therefore, a closed issue does not indicate that a feature is already available in a release yet. We urge users to also search closed issues for any problem they may encounter and to check whether a desired feature addition has already been made but isn't released yet.