Various Ways to Contribute to Rust

The [Clippy] project has spent a long time making its contribution process as friendly to newcomers as possible. Consider working on it first to get familiar with the process and the compiler internals. See [the Clippy contribution guide][clippy-contributing] for instructions on getting started. ### Diagnostic issues Many diagnostic issues are self-contained and don't need detailed background knowledge of the compiler. You can see a list of diagnostic issues [here][diagnostic-issues]. ### Picking up abandoned pull requests Sometimes, contributors send a pull request, but later find out that they don't have enough time to work on it, or they simply are not interested in it anymore. Such PRs are often eventually closed and they receive the `S-inactive` label. You could try to examine some of these PRs and pick up the work. You can find the list of such PRs [here][abandoned-prs]. If the PR has been implemented in some other way in the meantime, the `S-inactive` label should be removed from it. If not, and it seems that there is still interest in the change, you can try to rebase the pull request on top of the latest `master` branch and send a new pull request, continuing the work on the feature. ### Writing tests Issues that have been resolved but do not have a regression test are marked with the `E-needs-test` label. Writing unit tests is a low-risk, lower-priority task that offers new contributors a great opportunity to familiarize themselves with the testing infrastructure and contribution workflow. ### Contributing to std (standard library) See [std-dev-guide](https://std-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/). ### Contributing code to other Rust projects There are a bunch of other projects that you can contribute to outside of the `rust-lang/rust` repo, including `cargo`, `miri`, `rustup`, and many others. These repos might have their own contributing guidelines and procedures. Many of them are owned by working groups. For more info, see the documentation in those repos' READMEs. ### Other ways to contribute There are a bunch of other ways you can contribute, especially if you don't feel comfortable jumping straight into the large `rust-lang/rust` codebase. The following tasks are doable without much background knowledge but are incredibly helpful: regressions, etc. This is a way of helping that saves a ton of time for others to fix an error later. to read a part of the code and write doc comments for it. This will help you to learn some part of the compiler while also producing a useful artifact! of rust-related things. - Answer questions in the _Get Help!_ channels on the [Rust Discord server][rust-discord], on [users.rust-lang.org][users], or on [StackOverflow][so]. - Participate in the [RFC process](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs). - Find a [requested community library][community-library], build it, and publish it to [Crates.io](http://crates.io). Easier said than done, but very, very valuable! ## Cloning and Building See ["How to build and run the compiler"](./building/how-to-build-and-run.md). ## Contributor Procedures This section has moved to the ["Contribution Procedures"](./contributing.md) chapter. ## Other Resources This section has moved to the ["About this guide"][more-links] chapter.

This section outlines several ways to contribute to the Rust project, beyond just coding for the main repository. It highlights contributing to Clippy, diagnostic issues, picking up abandoned pull requests, writing tests, contributing to the standard library, and contributing to other Rust projects. It also includes non-coding contributions like reporting bugs, adding documentation, triaging issues, answering questions on community platforms, participating in the RFC process, and building community libraries. Finally, it gives pointers to external guides on how to build the compiler.