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CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing to the Microsoft Edge Developer documentation

Thank you for your interest in the Microsoft Edge Developer documentation. The Microsoft Edge team appreciates your feedback, edits, additions, and help with improving the Microsoft Edge docs. This page covers the basic steps and guidelines for contributing.

Sign a CLA

If you want to contribute more than a couple lines and you aren't a Microsoft employee, you must sign a Microsoft Contribution Licensing Agreement (CLA).

If you are a Microsoft Employee, follow the internal guidance.

Proposing a change

To suggest a change to the docs:

  1. If you are viewing the docs.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge page, click the Edit button in the upper right of the page. You are redirected to the corresponding Markdown source file in the GitHub repository. If you are already in the GitHub repo, navigate to the source file that you are changing.

  2. If you don't already have a GitHub account, click Sign Up in the upper-right corner and create a new account.

  3. From the GitHub page you are changing, click the pencil icon.

  4. Modify the file and use the preview tab to ensure the changes look good.

  5. When you are done, commit your changes and open a pull request.

After you create the pull request, the Microsoft Edge Developer Docs team reviews it. If your pull request is approved, updates are published to Microsoft Edge Developer documentation.

Making more substantial changes

To make substantial changes to an existing article, add or change images, or contribute a new article, the Microsoft Edge team recommends forking the repo into your GitHub account, and then creating a local clone.

  1. Click the Fork button in the top-right corner of the edge-developer repo.

  2. Click the green Clone or download button, copy to your clipboard, then run the following code at your command prompt:

    git clone {paste_your_repo_clone_link}

For more info, see Fork a Repo.

If you are unfamiliar with using Git, visit Lynda.com Git Essentials training.

Authoring your contribution

After you have cloned the repo to your local machine, begin authoring with the text editor of your choice. The Microsoft Edge team recommends Visual Studio Code, a free lightweight open-source code editor and integrated development environment from Microsoft.

Submitting your contribution and filing a Pull Request (PR)

After you are ready to add your changes to the remote repo so that the changes are staged for publishing, enter the following code in the command-line.

Step Command Details
1 git status This command displays the files you have changed so that you can confirm that you intended to make those changes.
2 git add -A This command tells git to add all of your changes. If you prefer to only add the changes you have made to one particular file, instead enter the command: git add {file.md}, where file.md represents the name the file containing your changes.
3 git commit -m "Fixed a few typos" This command tells git to commit the changes that you added in the previous step, along with a short message describing the changes that you made.
4 git push origin {your_branch_name} This command pushes your changes to the remote repo that you forked on GitHub (the origin) into the branch that you have specified. Because you have forked the repo to your own GitHub account, you are welcome to do your work in the main branch.

When you are happy with your changes and ready to submit a PR:

  1. Go to your fork of the edge-developer repo:

    https://github.com/{your_github_alias}/edge-developer

  2. Click the New pull request button. (The base fork is listed as MicrosoftDocs/edge-developer, the head fork should show your fork of the repo, and the branch in which you made your changes.) You can review your changes here as well.

  3. Click the green Create pull request button. Give your Pull Request a title and description, then click the Create pull request button again.

  4. After pushing your contribution to the remote repo, you receive an email from Open Publishing Build Service indicating whether your commit built successfully. The email contains links to any errors or warnings, such as broken links. Click the View links to see your content staged on the review.docs.microsoft.com site.

  5. After your PR is submitted, the Microsoft Edge Developer Docs team reviews the PR, approves the PR, merges the PR into the main branch, and then merges the PR's commits into the live branch.

Working with Branches

When making contributions, submit your Pull Request (PR), requesting to merge from your working branch (such as a branch in your forked copy of the repo) into the main branch of the edge-developer repo.

The Microsoft Edge Docs GitHub repository uses the following two main parent branches:

Branch Details
main The content in the main branch has been internally reviewed.
live The content in the live branch has been published on the live site.

The series of branches is as follows:

  1. Fork the edge-developer repo, using GitHub.com.

  2. Create a working branch and make your changes there, rather than making your changes in the main branch of a fork of the repo. It works OK, though, if you do end up using the main branch of a fork of the repo.

  3. Edit a .md file. If you create a new .md file, add it to toc.yml.

  4. Push your commits up to the repo at GitHub.com.

  5. Create a PR at GitHub.com, requesting to merge the commits from your working branch into the main branch of the edge-developer repo.

  6. The Microsoft Edge Developer Docs team reviews the PR, approves the PR, and then merges the PR's commits from the PR's working branch into the main branch of the edge-developer repo.

  7. The Microsoft Edge Developer Docs team merges commits from the main branch into the live branch of the edge-developer repo.

  8. The build process publishes the PR's commits at the public site, Microsoft Edge Developer documentation.

Using issues to provide feedback on Microsoft Edge documentation

To provide feedback, rather than directly modifying actual documentation pages, create an issue.

Be sure to include the topic title and the URL for the page.

See also