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Contributing to NetBird

Thanks for your interest in contributing to NetBird.

There are many ways that you can contribute:

  • Reporting issues
  • Updating documentation
  • Sharing use cases in slack or Reddit
  • Bug fix or feature enhancement

If you haven't already, join our slack workspace here, we would love to discuss topics that need community contribution and enhancements to existing features.

Contents

Code of conduct

This project and everyone participating in it are governed by the Code of Conduct which can be found in the file CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to community@netbird.io.

Directory structure

The NetBird project monorepo is organized to maintain most of its individual dependencies code within their directories, except for a few auxiliary or shared packages.

The most important directories are:

Development setup

If you want to contribute to bug fixes or improve existing features, you have to ensure that all needed dependencies are installed. Here is a short guide on how that can be done.

Requirements

Go 1.21

Follow the installation guide from https://go.dev/

UI client - Fyne toolkit

We use the fyne toolkit in our UI client. You can follow its requirement guide to have all its dependencies installed: https://developer.fyne.io/started/#prerequisites

gRPC

You can follow the instructions from the quickstarter guide https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/#prerequisites and then run the generate.sh files located in each proto directory to generate changes.

IMPORTANT: We are very open to contributions that can improve the client daemon protocol. For Signal and Management protocols, please reach out on slack or via github issues with your proposals.

Docker

Follow the installation guide from https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/

Goreleaser and golangci-lint

We utilize two tools in our Github actions workflows:

  • Goreleaser: Used for release packaging. You can follow the installation steps here; keep in mind to match the version defined in release.yml
  • golangci-lint: Used for linting checks. You can follow the installation steps here; keep in mind to match the version defined in golangci-lint.yml

They can be executed from the repository root before every push or PR:

Goreleaser

goreleaser --snapshot --rm-dist

golangci-lint

golangci-lint run

Local NetBird setup

IMPORTANT: All the steps below have to get executed at least once to get the development setup up and running!

Now that everything NetBird requires to run is installed, the actual NetBird code can be checked out and set up:

  1. Fork the NetBird repository

  2. Clone your forked repository

    git clone https://github.com/<your_github_username>/netbird.git

  3. Go into the repository folder

    cd netbird

  4. Add the original NetBird repository as upstream to your forked repository

    git remote add upstream https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird.git

  5. Install all Go dependencies:

    go mod tidy

Dev Container Support

If you prefer using a dev container for development, NetBird now includes support for dev containers. Dev containers provide a consistent and isolated development environment, making it easier for contributors to get started quickly. Follow the steps below to set up NetBird in a dev container.

1. Prerequisites:

2. Clone the Repository:

Clone the repository following previous Local NetBird setup.

3. Open in project in IDE of your choice:

VScode:

Open the project folder in Visual Studio Code:

code .

When you open the project in VS Code, it will detect the presence of a dev container configuration. Click on the green "Reopen in Container" button in the bottom-right corner of VS Code.

Goland:

Open GoLand and select "File" > "Open" to open the NetBird project folder. GoLand will detect the dev container configuration and prompt you to open the project in the container. Accept the prompt.

4. Wait for the Container to Build:

VsCode or GoLand will use the specified Docker image to build the dev container. This might take some time, depending on your internet connection.

6. Development:

Once the container is built, you can start developing within the dev container. All the necessary dependencies and configurations are set up within the container.

Build and start

Client

To start NetBird, execute:

cd client
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build .

Windows clients have a Wireguard driver requirement. You can download the wintun driver from https://www.wintun.net/builds/wintun-0.14.1.zip, after decompressing, you can copy the file windtun\bin\ARCH\wintun.dll to the same path as your binary file or to C:\Windows\System32\wintun.dll.

To test the client GUI application on Windows machines with RDP or vituralized environments (e.g. virtualbox or cloud), you need to download and extract the opengl32.dll from https://fdossena.com/?p=mesa/index.frag next to the built application.

To start NetBird the client in the foreground:

sudo ./client up --log-level debug --log-file console

On Windows use a powershell with administrator privileges

Signal service

To start NetBird's signal, execute:

cd signal
go build .

To start NetBird the signal service:

./signal run --log-level debug --log-file console

Management service

You may need to generate a configuration file for management. Follow steps 2 to 5 from our self-hosting guide.

To start NetBird's management, execute:

cd management
go build .

To start NetBird the management service:

./management management --log-level debug --log-file console --config ./management.json

Windows Netbird Installer

Create dist directory

mkdir -p dist/netbird_windows_amd64

UI client

CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc CGO_ENABLED=1 GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -o netbird-ui.exe -ldflags "-s -w -H windowsgui" ./client/ui
mv netbird-ui.exe ./dist/netbird_windows_amd64/

Client

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -o netbird.exe ./client/
mv netbird.exe ./dist/netbird_windows_amd64/

Windows clients have a Wireguard driver requirement. You can download the wintun driver from https://www.wintun.net/builds/wintun-0.14.1.zip, after decompressing, you can copy the file windtun\bin\ARCH\wintun.dll to ./dist/netbird_windows_amd64/.

NSIS compiler

NSIS Plugins. Download and move them to the NSIS plugins folder.

Windows Installer

export APPVER=0.0.0.1
makensis -V4 client/installer.nsis

The installer netbird-installer.exe will be created in root directory.

Test suite

The tests can be started via:

cd netbird
go test -exec sudo ./...

On Windows use a powershell with administrator privileges

Non-GTK environments will need the libayatana-appindicator3-dev (debian/ubuntu) package installed

Checklist before submitting a PR

As a critical network service and open-source project, we must enforce a few things before submitting the pull-requests:

  • Keep functions as simple as possible, with a single purpose
  • Use private functions and constants where possible
  • Comment on any new public functions
  • Add unit tests for any new public function

When pushing fixes to the PR comments, please push as separate commits; we will squash the PR before merging, so there is no need to squash it before pushing it, and we are more than okay with 10-100 commits in a single PR. This helps review the fixes to the requested changes.

Other project repositories

NetBird project is composed of 3 main repositories:

Contributor License Agreement

That we do not have any potential problems later it is sadly necessary to sign a Contributor License Agreement. That can be done literally with the push of a button.

A bot will automatically comment on the pull request once it got opened asking for the agreement to be signed. Before it did not get signed it is sadly not possible to merge it in.