How to contribute

Prime directives: Privacy, Hackability

SearXNG has two prime directives, privacy-by-design and hackability . The hackability comes in three levels:

  • support of search engines

  • plugins to alter search behaviour

  • hacking SearXNG itself

Note the lack of “world domination” among the directives. SearXNG has no intention of wide mass-adoption, rounded corners, etc. The prime directive “privacy” deserves a separate chapter, as it’s quite uncommon unfortunately.

Privacy-by-design

SearXNG was born out of the need for a privacy-respecting search tool which can be extended easily to maximize both its search and its privacy protecting capabilities.

Some widely used search engine features may work differently, may be turned off by default, or may not be implemented at all in SearXNG as a consequence of a privacy-by-design approach.

Following this approach, features reducing the privacy preserving aspects of SearXNG should be switched off by default or should not be implemented at all. There are plenty of search engines already providing such features. If a feature reduces SearXNG’s efficacy in protecting a user’s privacy, the user must be informed about the effect of choosing to enable it. Features that protect privacy but differ from the expectations of the user should also be carefully explained to them.

Also, if you think that something works weird with SearXNG, it might be because the tool you are using is designed in a way that interferes with SearXNG’s privacy aspects. Submitting a bug report to the vendor of the tool that misbehaves might be a good feedback for them to reconsider the disrespect to their customers (e.g., GET vs POST requests in various browsers).

Remember the other prime directive of SearXNG is to be hackable, so if the above privacy concerns do not fancy you, simply fork it.

Happy hacking.

Code

In order to submit a patch, please follow the steps below:

  • Follow coding conventions.

    • PEP8 standards apply, except the convention of line length

    • Maximum line length is 120 characters

  • The cardinal rule for creating good commits is to ensure there is only one logical change per commit / read Structural split of changes

  • Check if your code breaks existing tests. If so, update the tests or fix your code.

  • If your code can be unit-tested, add unit tests.

  • Add yourself to the git://AUTHORS.rst file.

  • Choose meaningful commit messages, read Conventional Commits

    <type>[optional scope]: <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer(s)]

  • Create a pull request.

For more help on getting started with SearXNG development, see Development Quickstart.

Translation

Translation currently takes place on weblate.

Documentation

The documentation is built using Sphinx. So in order to be able to generate the required files, you have to install it on your system. Much easier, use our Makefile & ./manage.

Here is an example which makes a complete rebuild:

$ make docs.clean docs.html
...
The HTML pages are in dist/docs.

Live build

Live build is like WYSIWYG. It’s the recommended way to go if you want to edit the documentation. The Makefile target docs.live builds the docs, opens URL in your favorite browser and rebuilds every time a reST file has been changed (make docs.clean docs.live).

$ make docs.live
...
The HTML pages are in dist/docs.
... Serving on http://0.0.0.0:8000
... Start watching changes

Live builds are implemented by sphinx-autobuild. Use environment $(SPHINXOPTS) to pass arguments to the sphinx-autobuild command. You can pass any argument except for the --host option (which is always set to 0.0.0.0). E.g., to find and use a free port, use:

$ SPHINXOPTS="--port 0" make docs.live
...
... Serving on http://0.0.0.0:50593
...

deploy on github.io

To deploy documentation at github.io use Makefile target make docs.gh-pages, which builds the documentation and runs all the needed git add, commit and push:

$ make docs.clean docs.gh-pages

Attention

If you are working in your own brand, don’t forget to adjust your brand:.