While I invest a lot in making the software architecture as modular as I can, I haven’t spent as much time in documenting how to start contributing to the codebase. I know myself how intimidating it is to submit a PR to someone else’s repository, so it’s crucial that we, the maintainers, provide a viable entry point to those willing to collaborate. A welcoming, non-judging community also reduces the friction of the first public contribution.
One part that I’ve always found potentially accessible was the Providers API, which is how Passepartout auto-compiles VPN configurations for a plethora of provider servers. Nevertheless, no one ever contributed a single provider, and no wonder: providers were generated in CI with a convoluted set of undocumented Ruby scripts. Who on Earth would want to touch that mess?
When I found out about JavaScriptCore to solve a different problem, I suddenly realized how scripting could be a lower barrier to enter the Passepartout codebase, as there are way more JavaScript than Swift developers out there.
With the help of AI, I rapidly converted the old Ruby legacy to a brand new Node.js implementation that most developers would find easy to understand, develop, and test without even installing the app. Then I started documenting how to submit a provider step by step. This doesn’t imply that people will start adding new providers today, but offering accessible tools and documentation is a strict requirement for that to happen.
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