Submitting Changes
Emailing patches to the mailinglist (gitx@googlegroups.com) is the preferred way to contribute to the project. If you have a large amount of patches (say, > 10), then you can also send a mail to the list with a link to the changes. Use inline patches when possible so it’s easier to comment on the patches. I’m a bit strict in accepting patches, so please don’t be discouraged when I give comments on patches — it’s only to make them better. Giving feedback means I like the feature and would like to have it in GitX :).
Please don’t use the github pull requests, as it’s not possible to reply to those messages through a mail client, and they’re private.
Clean up your patches before submitting them: Don’t have parts of patches that add or remove irrelevant parts of code. Make sure the patches are in a logical order, and have a good explanatory commit message. This last parts includes commit subjects that fit on one line (less than 60 characters or so), and messages that are present tense rather than past tense (so “Add a one-line commit overview” instead of “Added a one-…”.
I might fix up the patches a bit before committing them. Submitted patches will usually find their way in my own repository in the pu/initials/* branches, where I reformat them to my convention. If I react to your message with specific code improvements, it’s often useful to check my repository to see if I did some of the changes already. You can then build on that, or send a message like “I’m ok with your changes”
Here are a few notes on GitHub forks/branches:
- Please keep your branches clean if you want them merged at some point. That means:
- Descriptive commit-messages, with #bug if it is a fix
- Don’t be shy to rebase your forks, to fix intermediate commits. Also try to rebase it onto the tip of master from time to time.
- Please clean up stale branches or commits that were already fixed by someone else (or were denied inclusion).
Of course a fork belongs to you, and these “tips” are just if you want to make life easier for people having a look at the network-graph ;)