How to contribute to XFCE as a developer

2024-02-27

Register on GitLab

Register on XFCE’s GitLab.

Add an SSH key in GitLab

On the top right drop-down click on Settings.

On the left sidebar click on SSH Keys:

Generate the SSH key

  1. Open a terminal on Linux or macOS, or Git Bash / WSL on Windows.
  2. Generate a new ED25519 SSH key pair:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "Name Surname <email@example.com>"

It will generate the key in:

  • Linux: /home/user/.ssh
  • macOS: /Users/name/.ssh
  • Windows: C:\Users\name\.ssh
  1. Copy the public key to the clipboard:
  • Linux: xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
  • macOS: pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
  • Windows: type %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_ed25519.pub | clip
  1. In GitLab paste the key in this location:

Give them a title and click on “Add key”.

Register on Element

Register on Element.

Join Matrix channel and ask for permissions

Join the Matrix channel #xfce-dev.

On the tile “Element” click on the button “Continue”:

When you’ve joined the chat, write something like:

“I want to contribute and want to be able to create forks and make merge requests.”

Wait for a response. When you’ve got the permissions…

Make changes

The workflow is roughly as follows:

  1. Go to GitLab and fork a repo
  2. Clone the repo to your local machine
  3. Push your changes to GitLab
  4. Go to GitLab and the repo and make a merge request