Making changes

1. Make sure the main branch of your fork is up-to-date:

   git fetch upstream
   git checkout main
   git merge upstream/main
   

   For further reference read GitHub syncing a fork documentation.

2. Create a PR branch with a descriptive name, branching from main:

   git switch -c pr/${GITHUB_USERNAME_OR_ORG}/changes-to-something main
   

3. Make the changes you want.

4. Test your changes. Follow Development setup and Running tests guides to build and test Tetragon.

   • Make sure that all new code is covered by unit and/or end-to-end tests where feasible.
   • Run Tetragon locally to validate everything works as expected.
   • If adding/extending tests is not required, mention in the commit message what existing test covers the new code or how you validated the change.

5. Run code/docs generation commands if needed (see the sections below for specific code areas).

6. Run git diff --check to catch obvious white space violations.

7. Follow Submitting a pull request guide to commit your changes and open a pull request.

Making changes to documentation

To improve Tetragon documentation (https://tetragon.io/), please follow the documentation contribution guide.

Adding dependencies

Tetragon vendors Go dependencies. If you add a new Go dependency (go.mod), run:

make vendor

Most dependencies are updated automatically using Renovate. If this is not the desired behavior, you will need to update the Renovate configuration (.github/renovate.json5).

Making changes to protobuf API

Tetragon contains a protobuf API and uses code generation based on protoc to generate large amounts of boilerplate code. Whenever you make changes to these files (api/) you need to run code generation:

make protogen

Should you wish to modify any of the resulting codegen files (ending in .pb.go), do not modify them directly. Instead, you can edit the files in tools/protoc-gen-go-tetragon/ and then re-run make protogen.

Making changes to CRDs

Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) are defined using Kubebuilder framework and shipped with generated Go client and helpers code. They are also included in the Helm chart for easy installation. Whenever you make changes to these files (pkg/k8s/), you need to run code generation:

make crds

Making changes to Helm chart

If you make changes to the Helm values (install/kubernetes/tetragon/values.yaml), you need to update the generated Helm values reference:

make -C install/kubernetes docs

Making changes to Prometheus metrics

If you add, change or delete metrics, you need to update the generated metrics reference:

make metrics-docs

What’s next

• See how to run the tests of the project.
• See how to submit your first pull request.