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= Qt Creator Plug-in Contribution Guide =

Even though there is already a good [https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_Creator_Plug-in_Gallery Gallery of Plug-ins] for Qt Creator, the tool may not yet do what you want it to do. If so, you are free to write your own plug-in. If you do, there is no need to contribute your plug-in to Qt Creator; you can always write and distribute your own plug-ins separately, provided you follow the licensing terms.

But we hope you will consider contributing your new plug-in to Qt Creator. We hope the following description makes the process of accepting or rejecting plug-ins for inclusion into the Qt Creator repository as transparent as possible. If our hopes are sadly unrealized and you still have questions, please let us know at [http://lists.qt.io/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator Qt Creator developer mailing list].

Here are the advantages you get by contributing your plug-in:

* Greater visibility for your plug-in: It becomes part of the default installation and is available to all users of Qt Creator. Your chances to find other developers willing to help improve the plug-in increases.
* The core developers will help to maintain the plug-in. It is part of the code base all core developers work on, so any breakages will be visible instantly. Updates to APIs, etc. will be applied to your plug-in as part of the routine maintenance.
* The plug-in will be covered by our QA infrastructure
* We will help with translations and include your plug-in in the Qt Creator documentation.

== Contributing new Plug-ins ==

Here are the criteria we use when deciding whether to include a plug-in:

* A change containing the plug-in code was submitted to codereview.qt.io. This process covers some "paperwork" like accepting Qt Contribution Agreement http://qt.io/legal/QtContributionLicenseAgreement.pdf that is legally required in order to accept code.
* The plug-in provides functionality that is considered useful by at least two core developers.
* The functionality is provided in such a way that changes to Qt Creator itself and to other plug-ins are minimized. A plug-in should be as stand alone as possible.
* Our due diligence process does not discover issues with the code. This includes patent issues as well as copyright issues.
* A positive review was made by at least one core developer. This code review covers:
** formal issues like coding standard conformance
** a clean git history
** code quality and maintainability considerations
* There is a tangible commitment by the submitter to help maintain the code.
* The submitter signals that he/she is willing to accept bugs assigned to him/her in our bugtracker at bugreports.qt.io/.

Unit tests or manual testing instructions are helpful but not required at this time.

== Retirement Plan for Plug-ins ==

Occasionally we will want to retire plug-ins and remove them from the code base. This can happen when functionality becomes obsolete,
other plug-ins take over all the functionality, or the maintenance burden becomes too high.

The following steps will be taken to retire a plug-in:

# An agreement among core developers is reached to remove the plug-in.
# The pending removal is announced on the Qt Creator developer mailing list.
# The plug in is disabled in the next release of Qt Creator
# The plug-in is removed from the development branch of Qt Creator after the next release.

The process can be interrupted at any point based on community and user feedback.

== Further Discussion ==