Contributing

Thank you for helping. There are many ways to do it, and most of them need no code.

Report a bug or ask for a feature

Open an issue on GitHub. A good report says:

• what you did, step by step, and what happened;
• what you expected instead;
• your Musa CAD version (musacad --version, or About in the application menu), your operating system, and how you installed it;
• the drawing, if you can share it, or a small one that shows the problem.

If Musa CAD crashed, attach the crash report it offers to save the next time it starts. How to file a useful bug report has the details.

When Musa CAD does something differently from AutoCAD, say what AutoCAD does in your own words. Please do not paste text from Autodesk’s documentation.

Send a change

1. Open an issue first for anything bigger than a small fix, so the approach can be agreed before you spend time on it.
2. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
3. Build with the dev preset and run the tests (ctest --preset dev). Add a test for what you changed. See Tests.
4. Update docs/COMMANDS.md for a command change, and add an entry to CHANGELOG.md.
5. Open a pull request and describe what changed and why.

Every file carries its licence

Musa CAD is LGPL-3.0-or-later, and every source file starts with two lines saying so:

LGPL-3.0-or-later

// Copyright (C) 2026 Pranay Kiran

Use the comment style of the file’s language. Keep them on any file you change, and add them to any file you create.

Commit messages

Look at the history for the style: a short subject that says what changed for the user, for example fix: closing the window read the Dynamic Input settings from freed memory, and a body that says why, with the issue number. Do not add AI tools as co-authors of commits.

No third-party CAD code

Musa CAD has its own geometry kernel and depends on no CAD library. Do not add one, and do not add a GPL library: it would change Musa CAD’s licence. DWG stays behind a separate converter program for the same reason.

Getting credited

Contributors are listed in CONTRIBUTORS.md. To be added, include your entry in your pull request.

Help with this wiki

This wiki has its own repository, MusaCAD/wiki. Every page has Edit page and Report a problem with this page links at the bottom. The most useful help right now is writing command pages: each one starts as a page of facts, and needs a plain-English explanation and an example. The wiki’s README explains the rules a page follows.