Contribute to JabRef

We are really happy that you are interested in contributing to JabRef. Please take your time to look around here. We especially invite you to look into our community members page where members introduce themselves.

I would like to try out a feature introduced at pull request

In JabRef, there are dozens of bug fixes and new features introduced using GitHub's pull request mechansim. You can browse all at https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/pulls. The JabRef team really welcomes users to try out these changes and to comment on them. Improving on changes in active pull requests is much easier than fixing them later on after their acceptance.

If you are familiar with the command line on your OS, then it is very easy to try out pull requests and give feedback. In the following, we try to give a minimal set of installation instructions to be able to run a contribution from a fork.

Required tooling

  • gg.cmd - A cross-platform and cross-architecture version manager. Download gg.cmd and store it in your home (or Downloads) directory.

Initial setup

  • Windows:

    • Open PowerShell

    • Switch to a directory containing git repositories. We recommend c:\git-repositories

      • mkdir c:\git-repositories

      • cd c:\git-repositories

    • Get gg.cmd

      • wget ggcmd.io -OutFile gg.cmd

    • Have JBang trust JabRef's source

      • .\gg.cmd jbang trust add https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/

    • Clone JabRef

      • .\gg.cmd jbang https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/blob/main/.jbang/CloneJabRef.java jabref

      • NOTE: You can also use the native git client: git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/JabRef/jabref.git to achieve the same result.

    • Make gg.cmd available in jabref source directory

      • cd jabref

      • move ..\gg.cmd .

  • Linux:

    • Open a shell

    • Switch to a directory containing git repositories. We recommend ~/git-repositories

      • mkdir ~/git-repositories

      • cd ~/git-repositories

    • Get gg.cmd (using either wget or curl)

      • wget ggcmd.io/gg.cmd

      • Alternative: curl -L ggcmd.io > gg.cmd

    • Have JBang trust JabRef's source

      • sh ./gg.cmd jbang trust add https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/

    • Clone JabRef

      • sh ./gg.cmd jbang https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/blob/main/.jbang/CloneJabRef.java jabref

      • NOTE: You can also use the native git client: git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/JabRef/jabref.git to achieve the same result.

    • Make gg.cmd available in jabref source directory

      • cd jabref

      • mv ../gg.cmd .

Now you are all set: You have a directory jabref containing the recent updates and also gg.cmd which you will need later for executing a JabRef build.

Note: If you don't want to store JabRef's source code permanently, you can follow the steps at our blog post on gg.cmd usage. There, JabRef's source is checked out in a temporary directory.

Try a branch

  1. cd into the jabref source directory: cd c:\git-repositories\jabref

  2. Checkout the PR and run JabRef: sh ./gg.cmd just run-pr <pr-number> - replace <pr-number> with the PR number or the unique branch identifier by GitHub

    • Example: 13182 for pr#13182.

    • Example: Yubo-Cao:walkthrough for the branch identifier output by GitHub

This will download the necessary JDK and a gradle distribution. On the first run, please give the system enough time to accommodate and wait until the JabRef window launches. Depending on your hardware, this may take a few minutes.

On Windows, instead of sh ./gg.cmd use .\gg.cmd:

.\gg.cmd just run-pr <pr-number>

Alternatives

  1. In case you don't want to use gg.cmd: You can install JBang for yourself and execute the commands directly. These are

    • jbang https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/blob/main/.jbang/CheckoutPR.java <pr-number>

    • ./gradlew :jabgui:run

  2. In case you don't want to use JBang:

    • You have the project clone ready and have some Java JDK available: In the jabref directory, execute ./gradlew run.

    • Install gh (the GitHub CLI, a command-line client for GitHub) by using the installer linked on their homepage or the commands given at the installation hints.

  3. In case you don't want to use gh: You can use the "usual" git clone ..., git remote add ..., git fetch ..., and git checkout ... commands to checkout a pull request from a fork.

I would like to improve the help page

Please see How to Improve the Help Page

I would like to help to translate JabRef to another language

We encourage you to read about translating the JabRef user interface.

I would like to keep Wikipedia pages up-to-date

JabRef improves -- and Wikipedia pages should keep up!

For changes affecting all languages, update the wikidata entry of JabRef.

For changes in a specific language, go to the related page, and simply click on "Edit" (top right-hand tab). Currently, existing pages are:

If there is no page for your own language, you can easily create one.

I have some cool feature requests

Come discuss it!

Can I make a donation? How?

Donations keep us going! You can use PayPal or bank transfers. Your institution/company can contribute too, through bank transfer for example. All details are provided at https://donations.jabref.org.

Our team consists of volunteers. To provide better support, we are currently trying to get a funded developer on board. Please consider donating money!

I would like to contribute code. How to?

Please head to our Contributing Guide.

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