Thank you for being interested in contributing. Structura is a program that can be used in several ways and there are a few things you should understand before Contributing.
Structura was originally only a desktop application, this comes with some baggage and some down sides. But support for using it with the gui needs to remain in place. To make this easier, the application was pulled out of the gui and mostly lives in "structura_core.py" the structura.py file is just a wrapper/gui.
As mobile users were unable to use the desktop application, structura core was made to allow me to make an API that doesn't rely on CLI. The Discord bot (maddhatters discord bot, not available to the public) runs in AWS lambda. That means it is a read only file system. For that reason structura_core.py and all dependencies must not rely on writing files to any directory except tmp. Any pull request that break this cannot be merged.
The CLI was added by contributors that wanted to make their own web services. This is allowed. Structura is MIT licensed and anyone can do anything with Structura. This CLI is kept in but not highly tested (unless someone wants to take that on.
Minecraft is a giant mess when it comes to naming, versioning, and block definitions. But because Structura dates back to 2020 and posted files still reference old block names, we need to be careful when updating blocks. In 2020 an effort was made to remove all hard coded block definitions. At this point, blocks are defined in 2 locations. Vanilla_Resource_pack, where the textures and texture locations are saved in a similar way to the default texture pack from Minecraft, and in lookups, where all the block geometry and nbt is defined.
When adding new blocks, do not remove old block definitions. Due to the project Mojang ran between 2020 and 2024 renaming all the blocks, old structures will be broken if the terrain_texture.json and blocks.json is simply copied from the new version. Instead, the old and new terrain textures must be merged. This is a bit painful, but it is what it is.
In 2025 when Vibrant Visuals was added, the CPU cost of rendering a bone became 50-100x more expensive. For that reason, when making new geometries, we need to be respectful of cube count. Excessive use of cubes will cause excessive lag.
When adding blocks it is helpful to add them to the all_blocks world so they can at least get tested each update. This helps when we need to do a big refactor. Simply add the block to the world where it makes the most sense. Add every block state you can to help in the future. Then remove all packs. (may need to manually removed them if they were attached to the world) and export the world and add it back into the git repo.
In the beginning I added the first 2 people who contributed to the manifest.json of every pack. If you stick around and help for more than a few months, I may choose to do that in the future. If you fix things you will get credit in the release notes and likely in a video covering that release.