Everyone is welcome to contribute code to FileTrove, provided that they are willing to license their contributions under the same license as the project itself. We follow a simple 'inbound=outbound' model for contributions: the act of submitting an 'inbound' contribution means that the contributor agrees to license the code under the same terms as the project's overall 'outbound' license - in this case, GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
The preferred and easiest way to contribute changes to the project is to fork it on github, and then create a pull request to ask us to pull your changes into our repo (https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests/)
We use GitHub's pull request workflow to review the contribution, and either ask you to make any refinements needed or merge it and make them ourselves.
Your PR should have a title that describes what change is being made. This is used for the text in the Changelog entry by default (see below), so a good title will tell a user succinctly what change is being made. "Fix bug where cows had five legs" and, "Add support for miniature horses" are examples of good titles. Don't include an issue number here: that belongs in the description. Definitely don't use the GitHub default of "Update file.ts".
As for your PR description, it should include these things:
- References to any bugs fixed by the change (in GitHub's
Fixesnotation) - Describe the why and what is changing in the PR description so it's easy for
onlookers and reviewers to onboard and context switch. This information is
also helpful when we come back to look at this in 6 months and ask "why did
we do it like that?" we have a chance of finding out.
- Why didn't it work before? Why does it work now? What use cases does it unlock?
- If you find yourself adding information on how the code works or why you chose to do it the way you did, make sure this information is instead written as comments in the code itself.
- Sometimes a PR can change considerably as it is developed. In this case, the description should be updated to reflect the most recent state of the PR. (It can be helpful to retain the old content under a suitable heading, for additional context.)
- Include a step-by-step testing strategy so that a reviewer can check out the code locally and easily get to the point of testing your change.
- Add comments to the diff for the reviewer that might help them to understand why the change is necessary or how they might better understand and review it.
There's no need to manually add Changelog entries: we use information in the
pull request to populate the information that goes into the changelogs our
users see.
This is picked up from both labels on the pull request and the Notes:
annotation in the description. By default, the PR title will be used for the
changelog entry, but you can specify more options, as follows.
To add a longer, more detailed description of the change for the changelog:
Fix llama herding bug
Notes: Fix a bug (https://github.com/steffenfritz/notaproject/issues/42) where the 'DEADBEEF' flag would not herd more than 8 Llamas if the moon was in the waxing gibbous phase
For some PRs, it's not useful to have an entry in the user-facing changelog (this is
the default for PRs labelled with T-Task):
Remove outdated comment from Ungulates.ts
Notes: none
Your PR should include tests.
When writing unit tests, please aim for a high level of test coverage for new code - 80% or greater. If you cannot achieve that, please document why it's not possible in your PR.
Tests validate that your change works as intended and also document concisely what is being changed. Ideally, your new tests fail prior to your change, and succeed once it has been applied. You may find this simpler to achieve if you write the tests first.
If you're spiking some code that's experimental and not being used to support production features, exceptions can be made to requirements for tests. Note that tests will still be required in order to ship the feature, and it's strongly encouraged to think about tests early in the process, as adding tests later will become progressively more difficult.
If you're not sure how to approach writing tests for your change, please ask for help via e-mail.
Everyone who contributes anything to FileTrove is welcome to be listed in the AUTHORS.rst file for the project in question. Please feel free to include a change to AUTHORS.rst in your pull request to list yourself and a short description of the area(s) you've worked on.
In order to have a concrete record that your contribution is intentional and you agree to license it under the same terms as the project's license, we've adopted the same lightweight approach that the Linux Kernel (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html), Docker (https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md), and many other projects use: the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin: http://developercertificate.org/). This is a simple declaration that you wrote the contribution or otherwise have the right to contribute it to FileTrove:
Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1
Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
660 York Street, Suite 102,
San Francisco, CA 94110 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
have the right to submit it under the open source license
indicated in the file; or
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
license and I have the right under that license to submit that
work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
in the file; or
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
it.
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
this project or the open source license(s) involved.
If you agree to this for your contribution, then all that's needed is to include the line in your commit or pull request comment:
Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@email.example.org>
Git allows you to add this signoff automatically when using the -s flag to
git commit, which uses the name and email set in your user.name and
user.email git configs.
If you forgot to sign off your commits before making your pull request and are on Git 2.17+ you can mass signoff using rebase:
git rebase --signoff origin/develop