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Contributing to What's Open

We would love for you to contribute to What's Open and help make it even better than it is today! As a contributor, here are the guidelines we would like you to follow:

Code of Conduct

Help us keep What's Open open and inclusive. Please read and follow the GMU Student Code of Conduct.

Got a Question or Problem?

Please, do not open issues for the general support questions as we want to keep GitLab issues for bug reports and feature requests. You've got much better chances of getting your question answered on Slack Group where questions should be asked in their respective channels.

Found a Bug?

If you find a bug in the source code, you can help us by submitting an issue to our GitLab Repository. Even better, you can submit a Merge Request with a fix.

Missing a Feature?

You can request a new feature by submitting an issue to our GitLab Repository. If you would like to implement a new feature, please ensure an issue already exists to be associated with your commits.

  • For any contribution, first open an issue and outline your proposal so that it can be discussed. This will also allow us to better coordinate our efforts, prevent duplication of work, and help you to craft the change so that it is successfully accepted into the project.

Submission Guidelines

Submitting an Issue

Before you submit an issue, please search through open issues, maybe an issue for your problem already exists and the discussion might inform you of workarounds readily available.

We want to fix all the issues as soon as possible, but before fixing a bug we need to reproduce and confirm it. In order to reproduce bugs we may ask you to describe a use-case that fails to assist in the debugging process.

In GitLab there are issue templates that you can use which paste in a sample format for you to use.

Check out the following issue for an example: https://git.gmu.edu/srct/whats-open/issues/31

You can file new issues by filling out our new issue form.

Steps to contribute and submit a Merge Request (MR)

Before you submit your Merge Request (MR) consider the following steps:

  • Search GitLab for an open or closed MR that relates to your submission. You don't want to duplicate effort.

  • Pull the latest commits from GitLab

    git pull

  • Check into the current development branch:

    All new commits are merged into this development branch before going live on the site in a tagged release (merge into master branch).

    git checkout consolidation

  • Create a new git branch:

    git checkout -B ##-shortdescription
# Example 
git checkout -B 31-contibution-guidelines-proposal

    All branches need to follow the above convention (##-shortdescription) ## in this case represents the issue number that your branch is related to. Each issue has one and only one branch and each branch has one and only one purpose: to add, modify, or remove a feature/bug from the repo. shortdescription is a few hyphon (-) seperated words that consisely describe the branch. This helps people who may be unfamiliar with the issue number to know at a glance what the branch

  • Now you're ready to write your code in your new branch! Make sure to follow listed style & commit guidelines/rules when contributing code.

  • Unit tests are run at the CI (GitLab-CI) level once you push your code to GitLab. We do this to ensure that the project builds properly and passes tests. In general, if you are adding some new piece of code like a function you must include appropriate test cases.

    For example if I compose the following function:

    int oneplus(int num) {
    return num + 1;
}

    then I would additionally write the following test case:

    @Test
void TestOneplus() {
    assertEquals(2, oneplus(1));
}

  • Before you push your code to GitLab it is suggested that you run all unit tests locally.

  • Commit your changes using a descriptive commit message that follows our commit message conventions. Adherence to these conventions is strongly suggested as it makes it easier to determine what each commit does when, for example, things break.

    git add --all
git commit # first line is title, two newlines is description

  • You will need to ask in the slack channel to be added to the GitLab repo. This step is necessary such that you have the necessary permissions to push up your branch.

  • Push your branch to GitLab:

    git push origin ##-shortdescription
# ex.
git push origin 31-contibution-guidelines-proposal

  • In GitLab, send a merge request to the current development branch.

  • If we suggest changes to your branch then:

    • Make the required updates.

    • Re-run the unit tests to ensure tests are still passing.

    • Rebase your branch and force push to your GitLab repository (this will update your Merge Request):

      git rebase consolidation -i
git push -f

That's it! Thank you for your contribution! 🎉

After your merge request is merged

After your merge request is merged, you can safely delete your branch and merge the changes from the main (upstream) repository:

  • Delete the remote branch on GitLab either through the GitLab web UI or your local shell as follows:

    git push origin --delete ##-shortdescription
# ex.
git push origin --delete 31-contibution-guidelines-proposal

  • Check out the current development branch:

    git checkout consolidation -f

  • Delete the local branch:

    git branch -D ##-shortdescription
# ex. 
git branch -D 31-contibution-guidelines-proposal

  • Update your current development branch with the latest upstream version:

    git l --ff upstream consolidation

Coding Rules

To ensure consistency throughout the source code, keep these rules in mind as you are working:

  • All features or bug fixes must be tested by one or more specs (unit-tests).
  • This project doesn't have a strict style guide, but this is generally good to follow.

Commit Message Guidelines

Consistant commit messages are easier to follow when looking through the project history.

Commit Message Format

Each commit message consists of a header, a body and a footer. The header has a special format that includes a type and a subject. The header is mandatory.

Layout:

<type>: <subject> # this is the <header>
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>

Sample headers:

docs: update change log to beta.5

fix: need to depend on latest rxjs and zone.js

<header> Type

Must be one of the following:

  • build: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: gulp, broccoli, npm)
  • ci: Changes to our gitlab-ci configuration files and scripts
  • docs: Documentation only changes
  • feat: A new feature
  • fix: A bug fix
  • perf: A code change that improves performance
  • refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
  • style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, etc.)
  • test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests

<header> Subject

The subject contains succinct description of the change.

Sample Subject:

add in contributing guide

Body

The body should include a brief description of the changes made in the commit to provide additional detail.

Sample Body:

- Introduce my proposal for CONTRIBUTING.md
- Filled with the whats-open-web contributing guide but contains friendlier language

Footer

The footer should contain any information about Breaking Changes (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. and is also the place to reference GitLab issues that this commit Closes.

Sample footers:

BREAKING CHANGE: remove outdated dependency from requirements.txt. be sure to 
reinstall your packages in order for the project to build.

Closes #31

This "Closes" statement should only be incuded in commits that resolve an issue. What's nice about the statement itself is that when the commit is merged, the issue will auto close.

If neither of these situations are the case (breaking changes or issue closing) then feel free to omit the footer.