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Contributing to Q++

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Q++!

Building

Prerequisites

  • Rust — Install from rustup.rs
  • LLVM 18 — For building the compiler (inkwell). Windows: download tarball from llvm.org or choco install llvm; Linux: apt install llvm-18-dev; macOS: brew install llvm@18

Build

cargo build

Release build:

cargo build --release

The compiler binary will be at target/release/qpp (or qpp.exe on Windows).

Testing

cargo test

Development Workflow

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a branch — feature/your-feature or fix/your-fix
  3. Make changes — Follow existing code style
  4. Run tests — cargo test
  5. Submit a PR — Describe your changes clearly

Commit Conventions

We use Conventional Commits:

  • feat: — New feature
  • fix: — Bug fix
  • docs: — Documentation only
  • test: — Adding or updating tests
  • refactor: — Code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
  • chore: — Maintenance tasks

Example: feat(parser): add extern declarations

Code Style

  • Follow Rust standard formatting: cargo fmt
  • Run clippy: cargo clippy

Project Structure

  • src/ — Compiler source (lexer, parser, semantic, codegen)
  • stdlib/ — Standard library modules (fs, os, math, arena, simd, etc.)
  • docs/ — Documentation
  • tests/ — Integration tests