Contributing

Contributions are welcome across correctness, documentation, benchmarks, examples, developer experience, and performance analysis. By participating, you agree to follow the Code of Conduct.

Good first contributions

• Improve docs, Rustdoc, examples, or these pages (every page has a Suggest changes link).
• Add benchmark reproduction notes for different hardware.
• Add test vectors for Binary, Sparse, or Patricia trees.
• Improve error messages or API examples.
• Investigate performance with Criterion, perf, or flamegraphs.

Development setup

git clone https://github.com/1888-Labs/MerkleForge.git
cd MerkleForge
cargo test --workspace

The workspace pins Rust 1.97.1 in rust-toolchain.toml; rustup installs it automatically.

For work on this website (in docs/, built with Vocs):

cd docs
npm ci
npm run dev

Recommended workflow

1. Open or comment on an issue first for large API, storage, or cryptography changes.
2. Create a focused branch, for example fix/docs-links or feat/sparse-proof-tests.
3. Keep the pull request small enough to review comfortably.
4. Add or update tests for behaviour changes.
5. Update docs when public APIs, examples, or benchmark behaviour change.

Required checks

Run these before opening a pull request:

make fmt    # rustfmt
make lint   # Clippy across the workspace, warnings denied
make test   # all workspace tests in release mode

For website changes, also run:

npm --prefix docs run build

Pull request guidelines

• Explain the problem, the change, and how you verified it.
• Link related issues.
• Keep target/, local benchmark noise, editor files, and temporary artifacts out of commits.
• Include benchmark numbers only with the environment and command recorded.
• Avoid unrelated refactors in feature or bug-fix pull requests.

Security

Don't report vulnerabilities in public issues. Follow the disclosure process on the Security page.