## Contributing to YOLOv8 🚀 We love your input! We want to make contributing to YOLOv8 as easy and transparent as possible, whether it's: - Reporting a bug - Discussing the current state of the code - Submitting a fix - Proposing a new feature - Becoming a maintainer YOLOv8 works so well due to our combined community effort, and for every small improvement you contribute you will be helping push the frontiers of what's possible in AI 😃! ## Submitting a Pull Request (PR) 🛠️ Submitting a PR is easy! This example shows how to submit a PR for updating `requirements.txt` in 4 steps: ### 1. Select File to Update Select `requirements.txt` to update by clicking on it in GitHub.

PR_step1

### 2. Click 'Edit this file' Button is in top-right corner.

PR_step2

### 3. Make Changes Change `matplotlib` version from `3.2.2` to `3.3`.

PR_step3

### 4. Preview Changes and Submit PR Click on the **Preview changes** tab to verify your updates. At the bottom of the screen select 'Create a **new branch** for this commit', assign your branch a descriptive name such as `fix/matplotlib_version` and click the green **Propose changes** button. All done, your PR is now submitted to YOLOv8 for review and approval 😃!

PR_step4

### PR recommendations To allow your work to be integrated as seamlessly as possible, we advise you to: - ✅ Verify your PR is **up-to-date** with `ultralytics/ultralytics` `main` branch. If your PR is behind you can update your code by clicking the 'Update branch' button or by running `git pull` and `git merge main` locally.

PR recommendation 1

- ✅ Verify all YOLOv8 Continuous Integration (CI) **checks are passing**.

PR recommendation 2

- ✅ Reduce changes to the absolute **minimum** required for your bug fix or feature addition. _"It is not daily increase but daily decrease, hack away the unessential. The closer to the source, the less wastage there is."_ — Bruce Lee ### Docstrings Not all functions or classes require docstrings but when they do, we follow [google-style docstrings format](https://google.github.io/styleguide/pyguide.html#38-comments-and-docstrings). Here is an example: ```python """ What the function does. Performs NMS on given detection predictions. Args: arg1: The description of the 1st argument arg2: The description of the 2nd argument Returns: What the function returns. Empty if nothing is returned. Raises: Exception Class: When and why this exception can be raised by the function. """ ``` ## Submitting a Bug Report 🐛 If you spot a problem with YOLOv8 please submit a Bug Report! For us to start investigating a possible problem we need to be able to reproduce it ourselves first. We've created a few short guidelines below to help users provide what we need in order to get started. When asking a question, people will be better able to provide help if you provide **code** that they can easily understand and use to **reproduce** the problem. This is referred to by community members as creating a [minimum reproducible example](https://docs.ultralytics.com/help/minimum_reproducible_example/). Your code that reproduces the problem should be: - ✅ **Minimal** – Use as little code as possible that still produces the same problem - ✅ **Complete** – Provide **all** parts someone else needs to reproduce your problem in the question itself - ✅ **Reproducible** – Test the code you're about to provide to make sure it reproduces the problem In addition to the above requirements, for [Ultralytics](https://ultralytics.com/) to provide assistance your code should be: - ✅ **Current** – Verify that your code is up-to-date with current GitHub [main](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/tree/main) branch, and if necessary `git pull` or `git clone` a new copy to ensure your problem has not already been resolved by previous commits. - ✅ **Unmodified** – Your problem must be reproducible without any modifications to the codebase in this repository. [Ultralytics](https://ultralytics.com/) does not provide support for custom code ⚠️. If you believe your problem meets all of the above criteria, please close this issue and raise a new one using the 🐛 **Bug Report** [template](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/issues/new/choose) and providing a [minimum reproducible example](https://docs.ultralytics.com/help/minimum_reproducible_example/) to help us better understand and diagnose your problem. ## License By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the [AGPL-3.0 license](https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/)