This document outlines a generic process of contributing and applies to all CHAOSS repositories. Each repository may have unique guidelines specific to the project.
- Metrics definition. For each metric, we have a document describing it. The metrics are organized into various focus-areas. You can contribute by helping to refine those metrics definitions.
Anyone can contribute to CHAOSS on any of our communication channels. See https://chaoss.community/participate/.
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If you think something should be done (including a contribution by yourself), please open an issue in this repository. That will allow others to learn that you think some work should be done, and can comment on that. If you intend to do the job yourself, please say that.
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Everyone with an opinion on the matter should comment on the issue, explaining how they support the idea, propose some change to it, or think it is not worth / it is not the moment for doing it.
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If comments are positive, and a certain consensus is achieved, propose a pull request with the changes to the repository (new document, changes to existing documents).
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Everyone with an opinion on the pull request should comment on it, and detailed reviews should be done, maybe asking for new versions of the pull request. Once comments and reviews are positive, the change will be merged in the repository.
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If consensus is not reached at any of these points, or the process stalls, it can be raised during one of the Common Working Group meetings, or in the mailing list, to try to unblock it.
- The mailing list
- Issue submission
- Pull requests
Strategic directions, clarifications of scope, and ideas in an early stage are best discussed on the mailing list, calls, and face-to-face meetings. See https://chaoss.community/participate/.
Bug reports and specific feature requests are best discussed in an issue on the repository they pertain to.
Changes to source code files or documents are best contributed and discussed in pull requests. Please look at the CONTRIBUTING.md files for repository specifics.
In this process, make sure your GitHub account is setup fork then locally clone the repo:
git clone git@github.com:<your-username>/<repository>.git
Create a feature branch in your local repository:
git checkout -b <branch>
Make your change and commit the change:
git add <changed file>
git commit -m "<description of change>"
Push to your fork on GitHub:
git push origin <branch>
Then, submit a pull request on GitHub to the CHAOSS repository.
At this point you are waiting on the CHAOSS repository maintainers. They will comment on your pull requests within three business days (and, typically, one business day).
The CHAOSS repository maintainers will report on open issues and pull requests on the calls and via the mail list to elicit feedback from the community.
The CHAOSS Charter requires that contributions are accompanied by a Developer Certificate of Origin sign-off. For ensuring it, a bot checks all incoming commits.
For users of the git command line interface, a sign-off is accomplished with the -s as part of the commit command:
git commit -s -m 'This is a commit message'
For users of the GitHub interface (using the "edit" button on any file, and producing a commit from it), a sign-off is accomplished by writing
Signed-off-by: Your Name <YourName@example.org>
in a single line, into the commit comment field. This can be automated by using a browser plugin like DCO GitHub UI.
The DCO browser plugin is a handy tool to automatically sign commits created using GitHub. To enable this plugin:
- Go to the plugin page on the chrome web store.
- Alternatively, you could go to the firefox addon page to add the extension to your browser.
- Once you add the extension, right click on the extension in the toolbar of your browser and select
Options. - A dialog box will open up as shown below. Fill in your GitHub name (not the handle) and email-id.
- Then, whenever you perform a commit on GitHub, the line
Signed-off-by: Your Name <Youremail>will automatically appear in the commit description while making changes to a file as shown in the example below. A commit message can be added to the lines above the auto-generated sign-off.
- Once you perform the commit and send a pull request, the commit will be verified and approved by the DCO bot.
The README.md of the repository contains a list of who is maintainer. Each CHAOSS repository brings together different people and they document in the repository specific CONTRIBUTING.md how somone becomes a maintainer on their repository.
CHAOSS repository maintainers tag commits on the master branch as releases (snapshots). Each CHAOSS repository has its own release cadence. Between releases, the master branch is under development.