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Contributing

Tcpreplay is open source under the GPLv3 and welcomes contributions — bug reports, fixes, features, and documentation.

Where things live

The project is a single C codebase that builds all six tools:

  • src/ — the tool entry points plus the shared replay engine.
  • src/common/ — support code shared by every binary (packet injection, cache files, CIDR/MAC helpers, error reporting).
  • src/tcpedit/ — libtcpedit, the rewriting engine shared by tcprewrite, tcpbridge and tcpreplay-edit.
  • src/tcpedit/plugins/ — the DLT plugins, one per link-layer type.
  • test/ — fixtures and the test suite.
  • docs/ — this user guide (docs/guide/) and project docs.

The docs/HACKING file in the repo has the detailed coding standards and contribution mechanics.

Build and test

$ cmake -B build && cmake --build build      # build (see Installation)
$ cd test && sudo make test                  # run the test suite (autotools, root)

The test suite sends live traffic on the configured NICs and needs root, so run it on a machine where that's safe — never over the interface you're connected through. See Installation for build details.

Improving these docs

This guide is Markdown under docs/guide/, built with MkDocs Material. To preview your changes live, build it in a virtual environment (modern Python installs refuse a system-wide pip install — PEP 668):

$ cd docs
$ python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r guide/requirements.txt
$ mkdocs serve       # http://127.0.0.1:8000

Edits are ordinary Markdown. Keep the task-oriented tone: show people how to do a job, and link to the man pages for exhaustive option lists rather than duplicating them here. There's an edit pencil on every page that links straight to its source.

Reporting bugs and security issues

  • Bugs and features: open an issue on GitHub.
  • Security vulnerabilities: please report them privately via GitHub's security advisory process rather than a public issue — see SECURITY.md in the repo.

License and credit

Contributions are licensed under the same GPLv3 as the project, and contributors are acknowledged in the docs/CREDIT file.