Contributing

Thank you for considering contributing to Netdata!

Maintaining a platform for monitoring everything requires a vast knowledge base. We rely on community contributions and user feedback to continue to provide the best monitoring solution.

There are many ways to contribute, with varying skill requirements, explained in detail in the following sections.

One good way to start is searching through specific GitHub issues we need help with. Some of them are also labeled as "good first issue".

Give Netdata a GitHub star

GitHub stars are a great way to show your appreciation for open-source projects like Netdata. Starring Netdata helps us in several ways:

Increases project discoverability: More stars make Netdata more visible to others searching for monitoring solutions on GitHub.
Attracts valuable contributors: A high star count signals to developers that Netdata is a thriving project worth contributing to. This can lead to more features, bug fixes, and overall project improvement.

If you enjoy using Netdata, consider giving it a 🌟!

Join the Netdata Community

Engage with the Netdata community and get help, share knowledge, and contribute to the project's future! Here are the ways to connect:

GitHub Discussions: Discuss technical topics, ask questions, and get help from the Netdata developers and community.
Discord server: Chat with other Netdata users in real-time, share experiences, and get quick answers.
Community Forum: Find in-depth discussions, tutorials, and ask questions on a dedicated forum platform.

Contribute collectors

Netdata lets you add custom data sources through collector plugins. Before diving in, check our collector documentation to understand how they work.

The Netdata Agent has a modular approach to collecting data from data sources, meaning that we have a number of collector plugins that send data to the Netdata Agent. For each collector plugin, you can create a new module which collects data from a data source.

To contribute a new collector:

Go: Follow the guide How to write a Netdata collector in Go.
Python: Follow the guide How to contribute a Python collector.
Shell/Bash: Refer to the charts.d documentation.
StatsD: Unfamiliar with StatsD? We have an intro and reference docs.

Contribute alerts

Netdata comes pre-configured with alerts for common monitoring needs. You can help improve these in two ways:

Modify or add alerts: Enhance existing alerts or define new ones for specific use cases.
Alerts for new collectors: If you contribute a new collector, consider including basic alerts for it.

To do both, you'll need to create or modify alert configuration files. The process is covered in the Health Reference documentation.

Contribute alert notifications

Netdata Agent supports sending notifications for various monitoring alerts. The Agent uses alerts to trigger notifications and then executes a script called alarm-notify.sh.

To modify existing notifications or create new ones, you'll need to use Bash scripting.

Here are ways to get started:

Copy existing notifications: Look at the structure of already implemented notifications within alarm-notify.sh and adapt them for your needs.
Use custom endpoint as boilerplate: Look at the custom endpoint notification as a starting point for your custom notification script.

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