# Contributing to the Python Elasticsearch Client

If you have a bugfix or new feature that you would like to contribute to
elasticsearch-py, please find or open an issue about it first. Talk about what
you would like to do. It may be that somebody is already working on it, or that
there are particular issues that you should know about before implementing the
change.

We enjoy working with contributors to get their code accepted. There are many
approaches to fixing a problem and it is important to find the best approach
before writing too much code.

## The one rule

Adapted from [pi's contributing philosophy](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#the-one-rule).

**You must understand your code.** If you cannot explain what your changes do and how they interact with the rest of the codebase, the PR will be closed.

Using AI to write code is fine. Submitting AI-generated code without understanding it is not.

If you use an agent, run it from the repo root so it picks up `AGENTS.md` automatically. Your agent must follow the rules in that file.

## Running Elasticsearch locally

We've provided a script to start an Elasticsearch cluster of a certain version
found at `.buildkite/run-elasticsearch.sh`.

There are several environment variables that control integration tests:

- `PYTHON_VERSION`: Version of Python to use, defaults to `3.14`
- `PYTHON_CONNECTION_CLASS`: Connection class to use, defaults to `Urllib3HttpConnection`
- `STACK_VERSION`: Version of Elasticsearch to use. These should be
  the same as tags of `docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch`
  such as `8.0.0-SNAPSHOT`, `7.x-SNAPSHOT`, etc. Defaults to the
  same `*-SNAPSHOT` version as the branch.

**NOTE: You don't need to run the live integration tests for all changes. If
you don't have Elasticsearch running locally the integration tests will be skipped.**

## API Code Generation

All API methods for the `Elasticsearch` and `AsyncElasticsearch` client instances
(like `search()`) are automatically generated from the
[Elasticsearch specification](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-specification)
and [rest-api-spec](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/tree/master/rest-api-spec/src/main/resources/rest-api-spec/api).
Any changes to these methods should instead be submitted to the Elasticsearch specification project and will be imported the next time
the clients API is generated. The generator itself is currently a private project.

## Contributing Code Changes

The process for contributing to any of the Elasticsearch repositories is similar.

1. Please make sure you have signed the [Contributor License
   Agreement](http://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement/). We are not
   asking you to assign copyright to us, but to give us the right to distribute
   your code without restriction. We ask this of all contributors in order to
   assure our users of the origin and continuing existence of the code. You only
   need to sign the CLA once.

2. Run the linter and test suite to ensure your changes do not break existing code:

   ```
   # Install Nox for task management
   $ python -m pip install nox
   
   # Auto-format and lint your changes
   $ nox -rs format
   
   # Run the test suite
   $ nox -rs test
   ```

3. Rebase your changes.
   Update your local repository with the most recent code from the main
   elasticsearch-py repository, and rebase your branch on top of the latest `main`
   branch. We prefer your changes to be squashed into a single commit for easier
   backporting.

4. Submit a pull request. Push your local changes to your forked copy of the
   repository and submit a pull request. In the pull request, describe what your
   changes do and mention the number of the issue where discussion has taken
   place, eg “Closes #123″.  Please consider adding or modifying tests related to
   your changes.

Then sit back and wait. There will probably be a discussion about the pull
request and, if any changes are needed, we would love to work with you to get
your pull request merged into elasticsearch-py.
