# Contributing to MkDocs

An introduction to contributing to the MkDocs project.

The MkDocs project welcomes, and depends, on contributions from developers and users in the open source community. Contributions can be made in a number of ways, a few examples are:

- Code patches via pull requests
- Documentation improvements
- Bug reports and patch reviews

For information about available communication channels please refer to the README file in our GitHub repository.

## Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the MkDocs project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms, and mailing lists is expected to follow the PyPA Code of Conduct.

## Reporting an Issue

Please include as much detail as you can. Let us know your platform and MkDocs version. If the problem is visual (for example a theme or design issue) please add a screenshot and if you get an error please include the full error and traceback.

## Testing the Development Version

If you want to just install and try out the latest development version of MkDocs you can do so with the following command. This can be useful if you want to provide feedback for a new feature or want to confirm if a bug you have encountered is fixed in the git master. It is strongly recommended that you do this within a virtualenv.

    pip install https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/archive/master.tar.gz

## Installing for Development

First you'll need to fork and clone the repository. Once you have a local copy, run the following command. It is strongly recommended that you do this within a virtualenv.

    pip install --editable .

This will install MkDocs in development mode which binds the `mkdocs` command to the git repository.

## Running the tests

To run the tests, it is recommended that you use Hatch.

Install Hatch using pip by running the command `pip install hatch`. Then the test suite can be run for MkDocs by running the command `hatch run all` in the root of your MkDocs repository.

It will attempt to run the tests against all of the Python versions we support. So don't be concerned if you are missing some. The rest will be verified by GitHub Actions when you submit a pull request.

## Formatting the code

Python code within MkDocs' code base is formatted using Black and Isort. You can automatically format the code according to these tools with `hatch run style:format`.

## Translating themes

To localize a theme to your favorite language, follow the guide on Translating Themes. We welcome translation Pull Requests!

## Submitting Pull Requests

If you're considering a large code contribution to MkDocs, please prefer to open an issue first to get early feedback on the idea.

Once you think the code is ready to be reviewed, push it to your fork and send a pull request. For a change to be accepted it will most likely need to have tests and documentation if it is a new feature.

### Submitting changes to the builtin themes

When installed with `i18n` support (`pip install mkdocs[i18n]`), MkDocs allows themes to support being translated into various languages (referred to as locales) if they respect Jinja's i18n extension by wrapping text placeholders with `{% trans %}` and `{% endtrans %}` tags.

Each time a translatable text placeholder is added, removed or changed in a theme template, the theme's Portable Object Template (`pot`) file needs to be updated by running the `extract_messages` command. To update the `pot` file for both built-in themes, run these commands:

    pybabel extract --project=MkDocs --copyright-holder=MkDocs --msgid-bugs-address='https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues' --no-wrap --version="$(hatch version)" --mapping-file mkdocs/themes/babel.cfg --output-file mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/messages.pot mkdocs/themes/mkdocs
    pybabel extract --project=MkDocs --copyright-holder=MkDocs --msgid-bugs-address='https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues' --no-wrap --version="$(hatch version)" --mapping-file mkdocs/themes/babel.cfg --output-file mkdocs/themes/readthedocs/messages.pot mkdocs/themes/readthedocs

The updated `pot` file should be included in a PR with the updated template. The updated `pot` file will allow translation contributors to propose the translations needed for their preferred language. See the guide on Translating Themes for details.

Note

Contributors are not expected to provide translations with their changes to a theme's templates. However, they are expected to include an updated `pot` file so that everything is ready for translators to do their job.

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