Contributing

askrelay is open source (Apache-2.0) and welcomes contributions. It’s a Go project: one module, standard library first, five pinned dependencies.

Build & test

Requires Go 1.26+. The shipped binary builds with CGO_ENABLED=0 (a single static binary); the test target uses cgo because the race detector needs it.

make build      # build ./askrelay
make test       # race-enabled test suite
make lint       # golangci-lint
make tidy       # go mod tidy
make help       # list targets

CI runs the static build, a cross-compile smoke, go vet, the race tests, and golangci-lint. Make sure make test and make lint are green before opening a pull request.

Sign your commits (DCO)

Contributions are under the Developer Certificate of Origin — sign off each commit:

git commit -s -m "your message"

No copyright assignment (CLA) is asked or accepted.

Conventions

• Errors: exported sentinel values matched with errors.Is; wrap to propagate (fmt.Errorf("pkg: …: %w", err)); return a zero value or an error, never both. The pure core returns errors and never logs; only boundaries log.
• Logging: log/slog only — never log message content, secrets, keys, tokens, or PII; ids and shapes only.

Design docs

The source-of-truth design lives in the repository’s docs/ directory:

• askrelay-architecture.md — the full design
• askrelay-implementation-plan.md — work packages, technical decisions, and the risk register
• phase2-decision-log.md — every product decision with its rationale
• askrelay-system-map.md — the network & architecture picture
• GOVERNANCE.md, SECURITY.md — project governance and disclosure

These docs, not this site, are authoritative for why the code is shaped the way it is; this site documents how to use and run it.