lawnchair/CONTRIBUTING.md

Lawnchair Contributing Guidelines

Welcome to the Lawnchair Project, we appreciate your interest in contributing. Feel free to reach out to us on Telegram or Discord for any further questions.

💫 Bug reports & feature requests

Tip

Use the Lawnchair Nightly builds when creating bug reports and feature requests, as it contains the latest changes from Lawnchair.

For bug reports, describe the bug in detail to the best of your ability with steps on how to reproduce it. If applicable, attach log files.

For feature requests, describe the feature you'd like to see added to Lawnchair.

Make sure to be civil during the discussion of your contribution as outlined by the Code of Conduct.

🌐 Translation

For translation, visit Lawnchair on Crowdin and follow these tips:

• When using quotation marks, insert the symbols specific to the target language, as listed in this summary table;
• Some English terminology may have not have commonly-used equivalents in other languages. In such cases, use short descriptive phrases—for example, the equivalent of bottom row for dock;
• Some languages (e.g. French) have variations of words depending on if it's masculine or feminine (gender-specific); we recommend opting for gender-neutral words instead.

🧑‍💻 Code

Tip

For Lawnchair 9 to 14, see the branches with the 9- to 14- prefixes respectively.

For code, it's highly recommended that you use Android Studio, know Java or preferably Kotlin, and Git.

Important

Use Git to clone the repository; ensure that you include the project’s submodules using the recursive flag:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair.git

To build Lawnchair, select the lawnWithQuickstepGithubDebug build type. Should you face errors relating to the iconloaderlib and searchuilib projects, run git submodule update --init --recursive.

Here are some contribution tips to help you get started:

• Always make sure that you're up-to-date with Lawnchair by setting your base branch to 15-dev.
• Make sure your code is logical and well-formatted. If using Kotlin, see “Coding conventions” in the Kotlin documentation;
• The lawnchair package houses Lawnchair’s own code, whereas the src package includes a clone of the Launcher3 codebase with modifications. Generally, place new files in the former, keeping changes to the latter to a minimum.

Additional documentation

• The Lawnchair Wiki
• Lawnchair Visual Guidelines
• Lawnchair Quickstep Compat Library
• Lawnchair Preferences Components
• SystemUI Module
  • ViewCapture
  • Common
• Prebuilt Library

Versioning scheme

As of #4361, Lawnchair’s version code is composed of four parts, separated by underscores:

1. Android major version
2. Android minor version
3. Lawnchair development status
4. Lawnchair development version

Android major & minor versions

These represent the Android version in which Lawnchair is based on. They make up the first two parts of the version code:

• Major version: Indicates the main Android version.
• Minor version: Reflects any point release or update within the major version.

Example: Android 11 will be 11_00_XX_XX while Android 12.1 will be 12_01_XX_XX.

Development status & version

The third and fourth parts of the version code refer to Lawnchair's development stage and the specific version within that stage:

• Development status: Shows the current development stage of the Lawnchair build (e.g., Alpha, Beta).
• Development version: Specifies the incremental version within the same development stage.

The table below shows release phase used by Lawnchair:

Status	Stage
Development	00
Alpha	01
Beta	02
Release Candidate	03
Release	04

Example: Alpha 5 will be XX_XX_01_05 and Beta 3 will be XX_XX_02_03.

String naming

Strings names in strings.xml should follow this format:

Type	Format	Example usage	Actual string	Other information
Generic word	$1	disagree_or_agree	Disagree or agree	Should only be used if it doesn't fit the below categories
Action	$1_action	apply_action	Apply	Any generic action verb can fit here
Preference or popup label Preference headers	$1_label	folders_label	Folders
Preference or popup description	$1_description	folders_description	Row and column count
Preference choice	$1_choice	off_choice	Off
Feature string	(feature_name)_$1	colorpicker_hsb	HSB	Feature strings are strings that are confined to a specific feature. Examples include the gesture and color picker.
Launcher string	$1_launcher	device_contacts_launcher	Contacts from device	Strings that are specific to the Launcher area

Updating locally stored font listing

Lawnchair uses a locally stored JSON file (google_fonts.json) to list available fonts from Google Fonts. This file should be updated periodically or before release to include the latest fonts.

To update Lawnchair's font listing, follow these steps:

1. Acquire a Google Fonts Developer API key.
2. Download the JSON file from https://www.googleapis.com/webfonts/v1/webfonts?key=API_KEY, replacing API_KEY with the API key from step 1.
3. Replace the content of google_fonts.json with the API response.