netboot.xyz/CONTRIBUTING.md

# Contributing to netboot.xyz

First of all, thank you for supporting the netboot.xyz community and for 
considering contributing to the project!

## How to Contribute

Because netboot.xyz supports many different operating systems and utilities, it
takes work and time to keep the many options updated.  Distributions may add a
new version of the operating system, locations of files can change, and versions
might go end of life and drop off the mirrors.

The end goal is to support as many operating systems as possible so that it's
really easy to go explore new operating systems and tools from one location.

## What can I do to help?

### Help keep netboot.xyz updated

If you noticed one of your favorite operating system or tool has been updated,
feel free to open a [Pull Request] to get the operating system updated.  It 
will be reviewed and merged once validated.

### Add support for new OS and Utilities

Do you have a favorite utility that you use often but isn't on netboot.xyz?
Feel free to request it being added or submit a [Pull Request].

### Ask your distribution to become netboot friendly

If you don't see support for your favorite distribution in netboot.xyz, please
open up an [issue] with netboot.xyz and if possible, open up an issue with the
distribution.

Ask for the distribution to provide a way to load installer kernels from
their mirror directly or provide key files from their release ISO somewhere that
is accessible over HTTP. This usually might be a `vmlinuz`, an `initrd`, and
potentially a `rootfs` and could be extracted and hosted on the mirror when the
release is generated. Providing these allows not only netboot.xyz to load the
installer from a supported and trusted location but also users to do the same
from their own PXE servers. In this day and age as physical media is less
necessary, having the option to pull files as needed is much more efficient
especially when you may have limited bandwidth.

### Improve the documentation and knowledgebase

We are trying to make netboot.xyz a place to come to learn about infrastructure
automation so creating good docs on not only the project but how other distributions
automation works is important. A lot of the logic on booting is currently in code but
getting those into site documentation as well helps them to be better searchable by
search engines. If you are a technical writer, feel free to contribute docs that
would enable others to learn and grow.

### Submit ideas

We are always looking for new ideas to make the tool more useful, if you have an
idea, feel free to open up a Github [issue] or open up a [Pull Request].

### Communication Channels

* [Discord](https://discord.gg/An6PA2a) Chat Server for netboot.xyz discussions, questions, and development
* Follow us on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/netbootxyz) at [@netbootxyz](https://twitter.com/netbootxyz)
  for the latest updates
* Start a [discussion](https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz/discussions) or share something cool you have done with the project.

### Donate

We have set up an [Open Collective](https://opencollective.com/netbootxyz) and [Github Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/netbootxyz) to open the project up to those who wish to donate to help out the project. This may cover hosting and domain fees, hardware for validation testing, or anything else that comes up in maintaining a project like this. Every little bit will help! If you enjoy the work we do, please support us!

## Enjoy and have fun!

[issue]: https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz/issues/new
[Pull Request]: https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz/pulls