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CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the React Native Docs!

Code of Conduct

Facebook has adopted a Code of Conduct that we expect project participants to adhere to. Please read the full text so that you can understand what actions will and will not be tolerated.

Guidelines for Text

Different sections intentionally have different styles.

The documentation is divided into sections to cater to different learning styles and use cases. When editing an article, try to match the surrounding text in tone and style. When creating a new article, try to match the tone of the other articles in the same section. Learn about the motivation behind each section below.

Getting Started is relatively informal. Resist adding too much detail to the Quick Start. The native code instructions should contain the minimal set of steps to get to a working development environment, and is expected to contain a longer set of steps to get a working development environment. Whatever the case, it should be possible for a beginner to mechanically follow every instruction, and still get to a working React Native app.

The Basics is designed to introduce fundamental concepts in a step-by-step way. Each individual article in The Basics builds on the knowledge from the previous ones, so make sure not to add any "cyclical dependencies" between them. It is important that the reader can start with the first article and work their way to the last Basics article without ever having to "look ahead" for a definition. This explains some ordering choices. Resist adding too much detail to Basics articles. They intentionally don't cover all corner cases, and focus on establishing firm foundations.

Guides are deep dives into topics that aren't essential for a beginner developer but that everyone bumps into sooner or later. They don't have a specific order, and target more experienced developers. If you have a set of recipes fitting a particular use case, and those recipes aren't opinionated (most React Native users would agree on them), this is the place to add them.

Reference is organized by APIs rather than concepts. It is intended to be exhaustive. Any corner cases or recommendations that were skipped for brevity in The Basics or Guides should be mentioned in the reference documentation for the corresponding APIs.

Contributing should stay up-to-date and be friendly to relatively experienced developers.

More Resources has a more conversational tone than the other sections. Here, it's fine to include some content that's not primarily concerned with React Native, as long as React Native users are overwhelmingly interested in it (e.g. recommendations on which libraries to use).

Try to follow your own instructions.

When writing step-by-step instructions (e.g. how to install something), try to forget everything you know about the topic, and actually follow the instructions you wrote, a single step at time. Often you will discover that there is implicit knowledge that you forgot to mention, or that there are missing or out-of-order steps in the instructions. Bonus points for getting somebody else to follow the steps and watching what they struggle with. Often it would be something very simple that you have not anticipated.