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Contributing to Orn

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Orn, a modern low-level programming language!

This document outlines guidelines to help you contribute effectively. Whether you're reporting bugs, suggesting features, or submitting code, we appreciate your help.

AI-Generated Pull Requests Policy

Do not submit AI-generated PRs without genuine understanding and manual verification of the changes. PRs that blindly apply AI suggestions, especially those that claim to fix issues, fabricate testing claims, or show no evidence of actually running the compiled output. Will be closed immediately.

We value quality contributions from people who engage with the codebase. If you use AI as a tool to assist you, that's fine, but you must understand, test, and verify every change. "It compiles" is not "it works."

Table of Contents

Code of Conduct

By participating in this project, you agree to abide by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct. We strive to foster a welcoming and inclusive community. Join us on Discord for design discussions and questions.

How to Contribute

Reporting Issues

If you find a bug, please open an issue with:

  • A clear and descriptive title
  • A minimal .orn snippet that reproduces the problem
  • Expected and actual behavior
  • The compiler phase where the issue occurs if known (lexer, parser, type checker, IR, codegen)
  • Any relevant flags used (--ast, --ir, --verbose)

Suggesting Features

We welcome new ideas! Open an issue with the [Feature Request] prefix including:

  • A description of the feature and its use cases
  • How it fits Orn's philosophy of explicitness, safety, and clear error feedback
  • Example .orn syntax if it involves new language constructs

Development Setup

Ensure you have GCC (or Clang), CMake 3.10+, and Git installed. Then:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/pabloosabaterr/Orn.git
cd Orn
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

The --recurse-submodules flag pulls in the Unity test framework. Verify everything works:

./orn --help        # Compiler options
./test_frontend     # Run test suite

Useful Compiler Flags

  • --ast — Dump the AST for all modules
  • --ir — Dump the intermediate representation
  • --verbose — Show full build pipeline (module discovery, compilation order, linking)
  • -O0 to -O3 / -Ox — Optimization levels

Testing

Tests use the Unity framework and live under tests/frontend/, organized by feature (variables, functions, arrays, pointers, structs, control flow, etc.). Before submitting a pull request:

  • Write tests for both success and failure cases
  • Name tests descriptively: test_<feature>_<scenario> and test_<feature>_<scenario>_fails
  • Register new tests in frontend.c and update CMakeLists.txt if adding new files
  • Run the full suite: ./build/test_frontend

CI runs automatically on all pull requests via GitHub Actions.

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the MIT License.

Thank you for helping make Orn awesome!