Ways to Contribute Code

This page has been superseded by https://github.com/projecthydra/hydra/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

This page describes conventions and best practices applicable to the Hydra Git repository.

Two Ways to Contribute Code: Submitting Pull Requests & Committing Directly

Depending on whether you are a contributor or a committer, you will submit your code by a different process, so let's define these terms.

contributor: Someone who contributes code to a project but does not have commit permissions on the shared repository. Contributors submit their code by means of pull requests.

committer: Someone who has commit (ie. push) permissions on the shared repository. Committers apply their changes directly to the shared repository.

Guidelines for Contributors
Guidelines for Committers

General Tips for all Contributors

Reference Material

Excellent guidance is available in the Fedora Commons repository development area of this wiki: in particular, a page listing  Git Guidelines and Best Practices, a Git Quick Start Guide and a Git Resources.

Please read the page on Recommended Code Practices.

Files & Directories to Watch out for in Commits

You may have local customisations to your config/fedora.yml, config/database.yml, config/solr.yml which shouldn't be part of any pull requests. It's best to exclude these from commits (or simply stash your changes before committing, such that they are restorable after commit, leaving you with a clean tree). Also, the 'jetty' directory will sometimes incur changes while jetty is running, so it's best not to commit anything in this directory unless you have actually changed something substantive.