Getting started
===============

A great way of contributing to the engine is to test development releases
or the development branch and to report issues. It is also helpful to report
issues discovered in stable releases, so that they can be fixed in
the development branch and in future maintenance releases.

Testing development versions
----------------------------

To help with the testing, you have several possibilities:

-  Compile the engine from source yourself, following the instructions of the
   :ref:`Compiling <toc-devel-compiling>` page for your platform.

-  Test official pre-release binaries when they are announced (usually on the
   blog and other community platforms), such as alpha, beta and release candidate (RC) builds.

-  Test "trusted" unofficial builds of the development branch; just ask
   community members for reliable providers. Whenever possible, it's best to
   use official binaries or to compile yourself though, to be sure about the
   provenance of your binaries.

As mentioned previously, it is also helpful to keep your eyes peeled for
potential bugs that might still be present in the stable releases, especially
when using some niche features of the engine which might get less testing by
the developers.

Filing an issue on GitHub
-------------------------

Godot uses `GitHub's issue tracker <https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues>`_
for bug reports. When you start filing a bug report, you’ll be given a form to
fill out. Please try to follow it so that all issues are consistent and provide
the required information.
