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CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing

Introduction

This document describes the usages and rules to follow when contributing to this project.

It uses the uppercase keywords SHOULD for optional but highly recommended conditions and MUST for required conditions.

git is a distributed source code versioning system. This document refers to three different repositories hosting the source code of the project. Your local copy refers to the copy of the repository that you have on your computer. The remote repository origin refers to your fork of the project's repository that you can find in your GitHub account. The remote repository upstream refers to the official repository for this project.

Reporting bugs

Upon identifying a bug you SHOULD submit a ticket, regardless of your plan for fixing it. If you plan to fix the bug, you SHOULD discuss your plans to avoid having your work rejected.

Before implementing a new feature, you SHOULD submit a ticket for discussion on your plans. The feature might have been rejected already, or the implementation might already be decided.

Cloning

You MUST fork the project's repository to your GitHub account by clicking on the Fork button.

Then, from your fork's page, copy the Git Read-Only URL to your clipboard. You MUST perform the following commands in the folder you choose, replacing $URL by the URL you just copied, $UPSTREAM_URL by the Git Read-Only project of the official repository, and $PROJECT by the name of this project.

$ git clone "$URL"
$ cd $PROJECT
$ git remote add upstream $UPSTREAM_URL

Branching

Before starting working on the code, you MUST update to upstream. The project is always evolving, and as such you SHOULD always strive to keep up to date when submitting patches to make sure they can be merged without conflicts.

To update the current branch to upstream, you can use the following commands.

$ git fetch upstream
$ git rebase upstream/master

It may ask you to stash your changes, in which case you stash with:

$ git stash

And put your changes back in with:

$ git stash pop

You SHOULD use these commands both before working on your patch and before submitting the pull request. If conflicts arise it is your responsability to deal with them.

You MUST create a new branch for your work. First make sure you have 'fetched' master

$ git checkout -b $BRANCH upstream/master

You MUST use a an insightful branch name.

If you later need to switch back to an existing branch $BRANCH, you can use:

$ git checkout $BRANCH

Source editing

The following rules MUST be followed:

  • Indentation uses 4 horizontal spaces
  • Tabs should not be used
  • Do NOT align code; only indentation is allowed

The following rules SHOULD be followed:

  • Write small functions whenever possible
  • Avoid having too many clauses containing clauses containing clauses
  • Lines SHOULD NOT span more than 80 columns

When in doubt indentation as performed in the Erlang Emacs Mode is correct.

Committing

You MUST ensure that all commits pass all tests and do not have extra Dialyzer warnings.

You MUST put all the related work in a single commit. Fixing a bug is one commit, adding a feature is one commit, adding two features is two commits.

You MUST write a proper commit title and message. The commit title MUST be at most 72 characters; it is the first line of the commit text. The second line of the commit text MUST be left blank. The third line and beyond is the commit message. You SHOULD write a commit message. If you do, you MUST make all lines smaller than 80 characters. You SHOULD explain what the commit does, what references you used and any other information that helps understanding your work.

Submitting the pull request

You MUST push your branch $BRANCH to GitHub, using the following command:

$ git push origin $BRANCH

You MUST then submit the pull request by using the GitHub interface to the master branch. You SHOULD provide an explanatory message and refer to any previous ticket related to this patch.