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20 – Contributing to Cosmos (Project Guidelines)

This guide is for contributors to the Cosmos codebase itself—including cosmos-core, cosmos-cli, stellar, nova, and related tooling.

🛠️ Project Philosophy

  • Cosmos is modular, minimal, and predictable
  • Contributions should avoid feature bloat or scope creep
  • Every crate should do one thing well and be testable in isolation

🎓 Getting Started

  1. Clone the repo
  2. Use the latest stable Rust (rustup update)
  3. Build the workspace: bash cargo build --workspace
  4. Run all tests: bash cargo test --workspace
  5. Optional: install cargo-make or just if you're using task runners

🔨 Code Guidelines

  • Follow Rust 2021 edition idioms
  • Use thiserror for error enums
  • Favor Result<T, CosmosError> over panics
  • Don’t use unwrap() unless you really mean it
  • All FFI functions must be #[no_mangle] and use C types

🔄 Pull Requests

  • One logical change per PR
  • PR title should summarize purpose
  • Document new CLI commands, options, or config fields
  • Include tests where applicable
  • Update relevant markdown docs in /docs

📊 Feature Flags

  • Use #[cfg(feature = "ffi")] for optional components
  • Don’t enable features by default unless essential

✏️ Docs and Comments

  • Public functions should have doc comments
  • Internal helpers can use line comments for clarity
  • Markdown docs should be updated when adding major features

🌐 Licensing and Attribution

  • All contributions are MIT licensed
  • Add your name to the AUTHORS file if you wish
  • Respect the project's tone: technical, clear, with dry humor allowed

🌟 Where to Help

  • Finish Nova runtime logic
  • Improve dependency resolution logic
  • Add stellar lint / stellar test features
  • Write sample Stars for testing and examples
  • Write CLI integration tests

Cosmos is built for clarity and longevity. Contributions that make it more robust, understandable, and portable are always welcome.