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Contributing Guidelines

This document contains information and guidelines about contributing to this project. Please read it before you start participating.

Asking Questions

Questions are welcome! We encourage you to ask questions through GitHub issues. Before doing so, please check that the project issues database doesn't already include an answer to your question. Then open a new Issue and use the "Question" label.

Pull Requests

We love pull requests!

Pull requests should adhere to our Code Review Guidelines and Code of Conduct.

All contributions will be licensed under the MIT license.

Getting Started

Our backlog has many items tagged with "good first issue". If you'd like to pick one of these up, please fork the repo and make a pull request for us to review.

Our Architecture.md documentation is a good reference get oriented on the structure of the codebase.

Structuring a PR Commit

Commit Messages

Commit history is an important part of the project's documentation. Besides its obvious testimonial value, commits represent a point in time in the project's lifetime in a given context. A good record of the changes that occurred during the project's life helps to guarantee that it can outlive its stakeholders no matter how foundational or crucial these individuals (or groups) were. As any reading material, it is best appreciated and comprehended when there's a visible structure that readers can follow and reason about.

For that we've defined a structure for commit messages that all contributors must follow to maintain coherence on the project's commit log. The proposed format has been inspired by this great article

Preparing to contribute to the project

The first thing you should look for is an existing issue. It is possible that the contribution you are planning to work on was already discussed by other users and/or contributors in the past. If not present, file an issue following the criteria described in the preceeding sections.

Every contribution must reference an existing Issue. This issue is important since it will be directly referenced in the title of your commit.

We prefer small PR's, which makes it easier for us quickly review and merge changes. We encourage our contributors to use Squash commits extensively. Maintainers prefer avoiding merge commits when possible. It is very much likely that if accepted, your contribution will be squash merged.

When squashing commits, use your best judgement. In some situations, a refactoring may be done before actual behavior changes are implemented. It is reasonable to keep such a refactoring as a separate commit as it both makes review easier and allows for these refactoring commit SHAs to be added to .git-blame-ignore-revs.

Commit Title

The first line of your commit message constitutes its title. Maintainers will use commit titles to create release notes. Your contribution will be featured in a public release of the project. Think of it as a newspaper headline. It should be descriptive and provide the reader a broad idea of what the commit is about. You can use a related github issue if it matches this criterion.

Preferred title format

[#{issue_number}] {self_descriptive_title}

Example

[#258] - User can take the backup test successfully more than once

optionally you can append the PR # between parenthesis.

Commit message's body

Use the body of the commit to bring more context to the change. Usually the bulk of the problem might be explained in the GitHub Issue. It's a good long term strategy not to rely on such elements. If the project were to change its hosting, much of the associated "Issues" and "pull requests" will be lost, yet the commit history will probably be preserved and the context will also be.

If there are followup issues for this commit, consider referencing those as well.

Use the tools on your favor!

When opening a Pull Request, GitHub will take the title of your commit as the PR's title and the body of your PR its description. Having a proper structure on your commit will make your day shorter.

Example:

commit [some_hash]
Author: You <you@somedomain.io>
Date:   some date

    [#258] User can take the backup test successfully more than once (#282)
    
    Closes #258
    
    this checks that when the user taps the finished button on the phrase displayed it has definitely not passed the test before going to the recovery flow.
    
    Note: this should actually go to the next or previous screen according to the context that takes the user to the phrase display screen from that context.
    
    Add //TODO comment with the permanent fix for the problem

When you open a PR with a commit like this one the first line will land on the GUI's title field, and the body will be added as the description of the PR.

Adding the text Closes #{issue_number} will tell GitHub to close the issue when the PR is merged.

Let the machines do their work.

Developer's Certificate of Origin