Developer Guide

Technical documentation for contributing to the Meshtastic Android and Desktop app.

Before You Open a PR

Things that trip up first-time contributors — check these before requesting review:

  • Formatting passes — run ./gradlew spotlessApply to auto-format, then verify with spotlessCheck
  • Detekt passes — run ./gradlew detekt and fix all reported issues
  • All tests pass — run ./gradlew test allTests (both are needed: test covers Android-only modules, allTests covers KMP)
  • Screenshot tests pass — if you touched any Compose UI, run ./gradlew :screenshot-tests:validateFdroidDebugScreenshotTest and update reference images if needed
  • Proto submodule unchanged — core/proto/ is a read-only git submodule. Never modify proto files directly
  • Docs updated — if you changed user-visible UI, update the corresponding page under docs/user/. The UI & Docs Governance CI workflow will flag the PR if you didn’t. Add the skip-docs-check label if it genuinely isn’t needed
  • Previews updated — if you changed UI composables, update the corresponding *Previews.kt file and screenshot tests. The governance workflow will post an advisory. Add skip-preview-check to dismiss
  • Branch naming — branches must start with feat/, fix/, chore/, docs/, build/, ci/, refactor/, test/, or deps/

What’s New for Developers

May 2026 — Measurement & Formatting — New page documenting the MetricFormatter API, locale-aware unit conversion patterns, and how to add new measurement types.

May 2026 — Testing — Compose Preview Screenshot Testing (CST) integrated: screenshot-tests/ module, @PreviewTest wrappers, CI validation, docs asset pipeline.

May 2026 — In-app documentation system added: markdown source under docs/user/ and docs/developer/ is bundled as Compose Resources and rendered via multiplatform-markdown-renderer-m3.

May 2026 — Architecture — Documented KMP module layering, Navigation 3 patterns, and feature module conventions.

May 2026 — Contributing — Established docs governance CI workflow for PRs that change UI without updating docs.

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