Thanks for taking the time to submit a contribution to Velocity! Your support is greatly appreciated. In this document, we'll give you some tips on making it more likely your contribution will be pulled. # Setting up a development environment This isn't as difficult as you may be led to believe. All you need to do is clone the Velocity repository in your favorite IDE and have your backend test servers set up to run behind Velocity. # Actually working on the code It is strongly recommended that you are familiar with the Minecraft protocol, proficient with using Java, and have familiarity with the libraries used in Velocity (particularly [Netty](https://netty.io), [Google Guava](https://github.com/google/guava), and the [Checker Framework annotations](https://checkerframework.org/)). While you can certainly work with the Velocity codebase without knowing any of this, it can be risky to proceed. Velocity tries to follow the [Google Code Style](https://google.github.io/styleguide/javaguide.html) for Java. As we have recently switched, some minor style issues currently remain, which will be fixed over time. # Notes on the build To reduce bugs and ensure code quality, we run the following tools on all commits and pull requests: * [Checker Framework](https://checkerframework.org/): an enhancement to Java's type system that is designed to help catch bugs. Velocity runs the _Nullness Checker_ and the _Optional Checker_. * [Checkstyle](http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/): ensures that your code is correctly formatted.