contributing

Contributing to the Project

Creating Branches

• Create your feature branch from the main branch: git branch <github-username>/<feature-description>
  • The feature branch should only deal with one issue
  • Make sure to create multiple branches for multiple issues, each with its own issue
    • We don't encourage working on more than 2 issues at a time
• git checkout <github-username>/<feature-description>
• Make sure you are on the feature branch: git branch
• Never work on the main branch

Committing Changes

• Check what files you edited: git status
• Adding files to commit: git add <file-name> or git add . to commit all files
• Commit files: git commit -m <useful-message>
  • Try committing frequently and writing useful messages to describe the changes you made
• Push your changes: git push
  • If it's your first time pushing changes from a new branch, you may need to run git push -u origin <branch-name>

Creating Pull Requests

Make a pull request when you have code to merge

• Go to your forked repo on Github and click the "Contribute" option near the top
  • Click Open Pull Request
  • Compare your branch to the main branch. Then click Create Pull Request
  • Assign the webdev lead to review your code (see the righthand side)
  • NEVER merge your own PR! (PR is short for Pull Requests)
  • Leave a comment if you want to. Then click Create Pull Request

Reviewing Pull Requests

• Code reviews are just as important as the code itself
• Head over to the Pull Requests tab and review the changes
  • Leave comments if you have questions/suggestions/concerns
• DON'T merge the code even after you have reviewed the code
  • One of the web dev lead will do a final review and do the merging

Fetching Upstream

Match your repository to the master branch

• Go to your forked repo on Github and click the "Fetch upstream" option near the top
• Click Fetch and Merge to fetch the master branch and merge the master code into your repo
  • This will merge any new changes made in the master branch into your repo
  • I recommend committing any of your changes to your forked repo before doing this, so you can see if there will be any conflicts

Assigning Yourself to Issues

Issues are tasks to be done for the project

• Go to the repo on Github and open the "Issues" tab
  • This acts as a taskboard for what needs to be done for the project
• Click on an issue to read more information about it
• If you want to work on an issue, assign yourself to the issue (see the righthand side)