============
Contributing
============

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Cocoa.

Contribution Policy
--------------------

The authoritative contribution policy -- code style and naming conventions,
commit message format, testing requirements, the pull request process, issue
reporting, and licensing -- lives in ``CONTRIBUTING.md`` at the repository
root. Read that file before opening a pull request; it is not duplicated
here, because a duplicated policy drifts out of sync with the real one.

Cocoa is proprietary (see ``LICENSE`` at the repository root); there is no
public fork/GitHub workflow. Branch from ``main`` for a feature and follow
the commit and pull request conventions in the root ``CONTRIBUTING.md``.

Building and Testing
---------------------

See :doc:`../getting_started/installation` for prerequisites and the full
build procedure, and :doc:`testing` for how to run and extend the test
suite. In short:

.. code-block:: bash

   mkdir build && cd build
   cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DBUILD_TESTING=ON
   make -j$(nproc)
   ctest --output-on-failure

Where to Start
---------------

- :doc:`architecture` for the module layout and library dependency structure.
- :doc:`extending_model` for a worked example of adding a new physics term
  end to end (concept, GWCE/momentum contribution, config, tests).
- :doc:`testing` for the reference validation new physics or numerics code
  is expected to satisfy, and how integration test references are
  regenerated.