Apple requires contributors to iOS projects to relicense their code on submit. We'll have to have individual contributors sign something to enable this.
Our volunteer legal have put together a form you can sign electronically. So no scanning, faxing, or carrier pigeons involved. How modern:
https://whispersystems.org/cla/
Please go ahead and sign, putting your github username in "Address line #2", so that we can accept your pull requests at our heart's delight.
To get started with developing for Signal iOS, please read [this tutorial on git best practices](https://gist.github.com/corbett/ef9fd5f1abbef3b02f3b).
We are trying to follow the [GitHub code conventions for Objective-C](https://github.com/github/objective-c-conventions) and we appreciate that pull requests do conform with those conventions.
In addition to that, always add curly braces to your `if` conditionals, even if there is no `else`. Booleans should be declared according to their Objective-C definition, and hence take `YES` or `NO` as values.
One note, for programmers joining us from Java or similar language communities, note that [exceptions are not commonly used for errors that may occur in normal use](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/324284/throwing-an-exception-in-objective-c-cocoa/324805#324805) so familiarize yourself with **NSError**.
We prefer to use [Storyboards](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/general/conceptual/Devpedia-CocoaApp/Storyboard.html) vs. building UI elements within the code itself. We are not at the stage to provide a .strings localizable file for translating, but the goal is to have translatable strings in a single entry point so that we can reach users in their native language wherever possible.
It's the eternal debate. We chose to adopt spaces. Please set your default Xcode configuration to 4 spaces for tabs, and 4 spaces for indentation (it's Xcode's default setting).
If you don't agree with us, you can use the [ClangFormat Xcode plugin](https://github.com/travisjeffery/ClangFormat-Xcode) to code with your favorite indentation style!
## BitHub
Open Whisper Systems is currently [experimenting](https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/) with the funding privacy Free and Open Source software. For example, this is the current Open WhisperSystems payout per commit, rendered dynamically as an image by the Open WhisperSystems BitHub instance:
If you'd like to opt out of receiving a payment, simply include the string "FREEBIE" somewhere in your commit message, and you will not receive BTC for that commit.
Signal wouldn’t be possible without the many open-source projects we depend on. Big shoutout to the maintainers of all the [pods](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/blob/master/Podfile) we use!
Since the initial release, Signal is being managed by [Christine Corbett](https://twitter.com/corbett) and [Frederic Jacobs](https://twitter.com/FredericJacobs).
