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Contributing to the Dasher Project

First off — thank you for wanting to contribute to Dasher! Dasher is a predictive, continuous-gesture text-entry system used worldwide as an assistive tool (eye-gaze, head-trackers, switches, joysticks and more). This guide gets you started; the full developer handbook lives at https://dasher.at/developers/.

The big picture

Dasher v6 is one shared engine consumed by several native frontends:

Repository Platform UI stack DasherCore integration
DasherCore All C++ engine + C API is the engine
Dasher-Apple iOS / macOS / visionOS SwiftUI compiled core + C API header
Dasher-Android Android Kotlin / Jetpack Compose libdasher.so via JNI
Dasher-Windows Windows Avalonia (.NET) dasher.dll via P/Invoke
Dasher-GTK Linux (+ Win/macOS fallback) GTK4 / gtkmm libdasher.so linked
dasher-web Web (WASM) Rust / WASM DasherCore compiled to WASM
website — Astro docs + public feature-status matrix (not a frontend)

Before touching a frontend, read DasherCore's C API contract and the cross-platform feature matrix — it shows what every platform already supports so we keep parity.

Where to go next

  • Building a specific platform: see the developer handbook at https://dasher.at/developers/ and the README.md / CONTRIBUTING.md inside the relevant repo. Frontend repos should follow the README template.
  • Coding standards: DasherCore/CONTRIBUTING.md is the project's gold standard (no naked new/delete, const-correctness, zero warnings, clean API boundaries). Each frontend repo states its own language-specific rules.
  • Design tokens: the normative source of truth is dasher-design-guide/DESIGN.md.
  • Proposing a cross-platform change: read the RFC process in our governance repo.

Definition of Done

A pull request is ready to merge when:

  • CI is green (build + tests + lint + format, as applicable to the repo).
  • New behaviour has tests.
  • If the change affects a cross-platform capability, the feature matrix (website/src/data/feature-status.json) has been updated in this or a linked PR.
  • If the change is a new UX/hardware interaction, an RFC is linked.
  • Docs / changelog are updated if the change is user-facing.

Quick expectations

  • Be kind. Our Code of Conduct applies across every Dasher repository and our Slack.
  • Open a PR, not a direct push. Reviews are required on main.
  • Small, focused PRs are easier to review and land faster.
  • Talk to us first for big changes — open an issue or an RFC.

Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO)

All contributions to the Dasher project must be signed off under the Developer Certificate of Origin. This is a lightweight alternative to a CLA — it affirms that you wrote (or have the right to submit) the code you're contributing.

How to sign off: add -s (or --signoff) to your commit command:

git commit -s -m "your commit message"

This adds a Signed-off-by: trailer to the commit message automatically. If you forgot, you can amend:

git commit --amend -s --no-edit

For an existing PR with multiple unsigned commits, rebase with signoff:

git rebase --signoff BASE_BRANCH
git push --force-with-lease

Why DCO instead of a CLA? Dasher is MIT-licensed and community-driven. A full CLA adds legal friction for volunteers. The DCO achieves provenance tracking with a single line, and is the same model used by the Linux kernel, Git, and many other open-source projects.

This file is the organisation-wide default. Individual repositories may add their own CONTRIBUTING.md with platform-specific build steps and rules, which take precedence here.