Contributing to emexDE

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• A mac with Xcode and Theos
• A iPhone/iPad with iOS 16+
• A free or paid apple developer account
• The certificate used to sign emexDE (you can get that from keychain after installing emexDE over Xcode).

Setup

1. Before you open emexDE in Xcode you have to run the Makefile first!, otherwise you end up breaking project internal dependency configurations:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ProjectemexDE/emexDE.git
cd emexDE
make jailed

2. Open it in Xcode (Now you can enjoyyy)

Ways to contribute

Good First Issues

You can find beginner friendly issues they are tagged with good-first-issue, they are beginner friendly.

Documentation

Improvements to docs, examples, comments are always warmly welcomed.

Bug Reports

Open an issue with:

• What you expected
• What happened
• Steps to reproduce
• Your environment (OS, version, etc)

Feature Requests

Open an issue describing the use case before writing code.

Submiting changes

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a branch (git checkout -b fix/thing)
3. Make your change
4. Run tests
5. Commit with clear message
6. Push and open a PR

Code Style

Swift

// Use [weak self] + guard in closures
someAsyncThing { [weak self] result in
    guard let self = self else { return }
    self.doThing(result)
}

// Inline closures for computed values
let key = {
    switch type {
    case .app: return "applications"
    case .utility: return "utilities"
    default: return "unknown"
    }
}()

// Use self. prefix
self.tableView.reloadData()

// K&R braces
func doThing() {
    // ...
}

C / ObjC

/* Allman braces for functions */
void do_thing(int arg)
{
    /* comment style */
    
    /* null check before use */
  	/* there is no space between if and brace in my code! */
    if(ptr == NULL)
    {
        return;
    }
    
    /* lock/unlock clearly commented and the reason */
    os_unfair_lock_lock(&lock);
    
    /* operation here */
    
    os_unfair_lock_unlock(&lock);
}

/* snake_case for C functions */
TaskPortObject *get_tpo_for_pid(pid_t pid);

General

• GPL v3 header on all new files
• Minimal comments - code should be self-documenting
• Defensive programming - check validity before operations (otherwise I will never ever again accept a PR from you)
• No force unwraps in Swift unless provably safe

License Header

All files must include:

/*
Copyright (C) 2025 emexlab

This file is part of emexDE.

emexDE is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

emexDE is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with emexDE. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/

You have to add your name undernethe the names of other people that have contributed in-case youre not in that list already. If you're the original creator of a new file in emexDE then your name is the first instead of mine, I add mine underneath yours in that case when I add or change something of your code!

Questions?

Open an issue. Please search existing issues first.