We'd love for you to contribute to our source code and to make Forge even better than it is today! Here are the guidelines we'd like you to follow:
- Question or Problem?
- Issues and Bugs
- Feature Requests
- Submission Guidelines
- Commit Message Guidelines
If you have questions about how to use Forge, please direct these to the Google Group discussion list or Github. We are also available on Gitter.
If you find a bug in the source code or a mistake in the documentation, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. Even better you can submit a Pull Request with a fix.
You can request a new feature by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. If you would like to implement a new feature then consider what kind of change it is:
- Major Changes that you wish to contribute to the project should be discussed first on our Github or Gitter so that we can better coordinate our efforts, prevent duplication of work, and help you to craft the change so that it is successfully accepted into the project.
- Small Changes can be crafted and submitted to the GitHub Repository as a Pull Request.
If you want to help improve the documentation, it's a good idea to let others know what you're working on to minimize duplication of effort. Create a new issue (or comment on a related existing one) to let others know what you're working on.
Please build and test the documentation before submitting the PR to be sure you haven't accidentally introduced any layout or formatting issues. You should also make sure that your commit message starts with "docs" and follows the Commit Message Guidelines outlined below.
Before you submit your issue search the archive, maybe your question was already answered.
If your issue appears to be a bug, and hasn't been reported, open a new issue. Help us to maximize the effort we can spend fixing issues and adding new features, by not reporting duplicate issues. Providing the following information will increase the chances of your issue being dealt with quickly:
- Overview of the Issue
- Forge Version(s) - is it a regression?
- Operating System - is this a problem on all OSes?
- Reproduce the Error - provide an example piece of code that can replicate the issue on our end.
- Related Issues - has a similar issue been reported before?
- Suggest a Fix - if you can't fix the bug yourself, perhaps you can point to what might be causing the problem (line of code or commit)
Before you submit your pull request consider the following guidelines:
-
Search GitHub for an open or closed Pull Request that relates to your submission. You don't want to duplicate effort.
-
Make your changes in a new git branch:
git checkout -b my-fix-branch hotfixes-major-minor-patch
If there is no hotfixes branch, branch off of devel.
git checkout -b my-fix-branch devel
-
Commit your changes using a descriptive commit message that follows our commit message conventions. Adherence to the commit message conventions is required.
git commit -a
Note: the optional commit
-a
command line option will automatically "add" and "rm" edited files. -
Build your changes locally to ensure everything checks out.
-
Push your branch to GitHub:
git push origin my-fix-branch
In GitHub, send a pull request to forge
. If we suggest changes, then:
- Make the required updates.
- Re-build and check corresponding examples work as expected.
- Commit your changes to your branch (e.g.
my-fix-branch
). - Push the changes to your GitHub repository (this will update your Pull Request).
If the PR gets too outdated we may ask you to rebase and force push to update the PR:
WARNING: Squashing or reverting commits and force-pushing thereafter may remove GitHub comments on code that were previously made by you or others in your commits. Avoid any form of rebasing unless necessary.
That's it! Thank you for your contribution!
After your pull request is merged, you can safely delete your branch and pull the changes from the upstream repository:
- Delete the remote branch on GitHub either through the GitHub web UI or your local shell
- Check out the parent(hotfixes-*.*.*/devel) branch
- Delete the local branch
- Update the parent branch with the latest upstream version
We follow some rules on how our git commit messages can be formatted. This leads to more readable messages that are easy to follow when looking through the project history and while generating change log.
Each commit message consists of a header, a body and a footer. The header has a special format that includes a scope and a subject:
<subject>
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>
The header is mandatory.
Any line of the commit message cannot be longer 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.
If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with the word reverts
, followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: This reverts commit <hash>.
, where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.
The subject contains succinct description of the change:
- use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
- don't capitalize first letter
- no dot (.) at the end
Just as in the subject, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes". The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.
The footer should contain any information about Breaking Changes and is also the place to [reference GitHub issues that this commit closes][closing-issues].
Breaking Changes should start with the word BREAKING CHANGE:
with a space or two newlines.
The rest of the commit message is then used for this.