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(Maint) Simplify CONTRIBUTING.md
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The previous CONTRIBUTING.md was verbose and prone to change as branches
changed. After discussion on puppet-dev I've cut it down a lot and changed the
policy for which branch to target to be a "prefer master" policy where it is up
to the merger to make sure it will go on the right branch.
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zaphod42 committed Aug 3, 2012
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Checklist/Outline (The short version)
=================================================

* Getting Started:
- Make sure you have a [Redmine account](http://projects.puppetlabs.com)
- Submit a ticket for your issue, assuming one does not already exist.
- Decide what to base your work off of
* `2.6.x`: security fixes only
* `2.7.x`: bug fixes only
* `3.x`: new features that are not breaking changes
* `master`: new features that are breaking changes

* Making Changes:
- Make sure you have a [GitHub account](https://github.com/signup/free)
- Fork the repository on GitHub
- Make commits of logical units.
- Check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check" before committing.
- Make sure your commit messages are in the proper format
- Make sure you have added the necessary tests for your changes
- Run _all_ the tests to assure nothing else was accidentally broken

* Submitting Changes:
- Sign the [Contributor License Agreement](https://projects.puppetlabs.com/contributor_licenses/sign)
- Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository.
- Submit a pull request to the repository in the puppetlabs organization.
- Update your Redmine ticket
# How to contribute

Third-party patches are essential for keeping puppet great. We simply can't
access the huge number of platforms and myriad configurations for running
puppet. We want to keep it as easy as possible to contribute changes that
get things working in your environment. There are a few guidelines that we
need contributors to follow so that we can have a chance of keeping on
top of things.

## Getting Started

* Make sure you have a [Redmine account](http://projects.puppetlabs.com)
* Make sure you have a [GitHub account](https://github.com/signup/free)
* Submit a ticket for your issue, assuming one does not already exist.
* Clearly describe the issue including steps to reproduce when it is a bug.
* Make sure you fill in the earliest version that you know has the issue.
* Fork the repository on GitHub

## Making Changes

* Create a topic branch from where you want to base your work.
* This is usually the master branch.
* Only target release branches if you are certain your fix must be on that branch.
* Make commits of logical units.
* Check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check" before committing.
* Make sure your commit messages are in the proper format.

````
(#Ticket Number) What you are changing with this commit
Describe what happened before. Describe the change in behavior that this
commit makes.
````

* Make sure you have added the necessary tests for your changes.
* Run _all_ the tests to assure nothing else was accidentally broken.

## Submitting Changes

* Sign the [Contributor License Agreement](https://projects.puppetlabs.com/contributor_licenses/sign).
* Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository.
* Submit a pull request to the repository in the puppetlabs organization.
* Update your Redmine ticket to mark that you have submitted code and are ready for it to be reviewed.
* Include a link to the pull request in the ticket

The long version
================

0. Create a Redmine ticket for the change you'd like to make.

It's very important that there be a Redmine ticket for the change
you are making. Considering the number of contributions which are
submitted, it is crucial that we know we can find the ticket on Redmine.

Before making a ticket however, be sure that one does not already exist.
You can do this by searching Redmine or by trying a Google search which
includes `sites:projects.puppetlabs.com` in addition to some of the keywords
related to your issue.

If you do not find a ticket that that accurately describes the work
you're going to be doing, go ahead and create one. But be sure to
look for related tickets and add them to the 'related tickets' section.

1. Decide what to base your work on.

In general, you should always base your work on the oldest
branch that your change is relevant to, and it will be
eventually merged up. Currently, branches will be merged up as
follows:
2.6.x => 2.7.x => 3.x => master

Currently, this is how you should decide where to target your changes:

The absolute earliest place something should be targeted is at `2.6.x`,
and these should _only_ be security fixes. Anything else must be
targeted at a later branch.

A bug fix should be based off the the earliest place where it is
relevant. If it first appears in `2.7.x`, then it should be
targeted here and eventually merged up to `3.x` and master.

New features which are _backwards compatible_ should be targeted
at the next release, which currently is `3.x`.

New features that are _breaking changes_ should be targeted at
`master`.

Part of deciding what to what your work should be based off of includes naming
your topic branch to reflect this. Your branch name should have the following
format:
`ticket/target_branch/ticket_number_short_description_of_issuee`

For example, if you are fixing a bug relating to the ssl spec, which has Redmine
ticket number 12345, then your branch should be named:
`ticket/2.7.x/12345_fix_ssl_spec_tests`

There is a good chance that if you submit a pull request _from_ master _to_ master,
Puppet Labs developers will suspect that you're not sure about the process. This is
why clear naming of branches and basing your work off the right place will be
extremely helpful in ensuring that your submission is reviewed and merged. Often times
if your change is targeted at the wrong place, we will bounce it back to you and wait
to review it until it has been retargeted.

2. Make separate commits for logically separate changes.

Please break your commits down into logically consistent units
which include new or changed tests relevent to the rest of the
change. The goal of doing this is to make the diff easier to
read for whoever is reviewing your code. In general, the easier
your diff is to read, the more likely someone will be happy to
review it and get it into the code base.

If you're going to refactor a piece of code, please do so as a
separate commit from your feature or bug fix changes.

It's crucial that your changes include tests to make
sure the bug isn't re-introduced, and that the feature isn't
accidentally broken.

Describe the technical detail of the change(s). If your
description starts to get too long, that's a good sign that you
probably need to split up your commit into more finely grained
pieces.

Commits which plainly describe the the things which help
reviewers check the patch and future developers understand the
code are much more likely to be merged in with a minimum of
bike-shedding or requested changes. Ideally, the commit message
would include information, and be in a form suitable for
inclusion in the release notes for the version of Puppet that
includes them.

Please also check that you are not introducing any trailing
whitespaces or other "whitespace errors". You can do this by
running "git diff --check" on your changes before you commit.

When writing commit messages, please be sure they meet
[these standards](https://github.com/erlang/otp/wiki/Writing-good-commit-messages), and please include the ticket number in your
short summary. It should look something like this: `(#12345) Fix this issue in Puppet`

3. Sign the Contributor License Agreement

Before we can accept your changes, we do need a signed Puppet
Labs Contributor License Agreement (CLA).

You can access the CLA via the
[Contributor License Agreement link](https://projects.puppetlabs.com/contributor_licenses/sign)
in the top menu bar of our Redmine instance. Once you've signed
the CLA, a badge will show up next to your name on the
[Puppet Project Overview Page](http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet?jump=welcome),
and your name will be listed under "Contributor License Signers"
section.

If you have any questions about the CLA, please feel free to
contact Puppet Labs via email at [email protected].

4. Sending your patches

To submit your changes via a GitHub pull request, you must
have them on a topic branch, instead of directly on "master"
or one of the release, or RC branches. It makes things much easier
to keep track of, especially if you decide to work on another thing
before your first change is merged in.

GitHub has some pretty good
[general documentation](http://help.github.com/) on using
their site. They also have documentation on
[creating pull requests](http://help.github.com/send-pull-requests/).

In general, after pushing your topic branch up to your
repository on GitHub, you'll switch to the branch in the
GitHub UI and click "Pull Request" towards the top of the page
in order to open a pull request.

You'll want to make sure that you have the appropriate
destination branch in the repository under the puppetlabs
organization. This should be the same branch that you based
your changes off of.

5. Update the related Redmine ticket.

You should update the Redmine ticket associated
with the change you submitted to include the location of your branch
on the `branch` field of the ticket, and change the status to
"In Topic Branch Pending Review", along with any other commentary
you may wish to make.

How to track the status of your change after it's been submitted
================================================================

Shortly after opening a pull request, there should be an automatic
email sent via GitHub. This notification is used to let the Puppet
development community know about your requested change to give them a
chance to review, test, and comment on the change(s).

We do our best to comment on or merge submitted changes within a about week.
However, if there hasn't been any commentary on the pull request or
mailed patches, and it hasn't been merged in after a week, then feel
free to ask for an update by replying on the mailing list to the
automatic notification or mailed patches. It probably wasn't
intentional, and probably just slipped through the cracks.

Additional Resources
====================

* [Getting additional help](http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Getting_Help)

* [Writing tests](http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Development_Writing_Tests)
# Additional Resources

* [More information on contributing](http://links.puppetlabs.com/contribute-to-puppet)
* [Bug tracker (Redmine)](http://projects.puppetlabs.com)

* [Contributor License Agreement](https://projects.puppetlabs.com/contributor_licenses/sign)

* [General GitHub documentation](http://help.github.com/)

* [GitHub pull request documentation](http://help.github.com/send-pull-requests/)

If you have commit access to the repository
===========================================

Even if you have commit access to the repository, you'll still need to
go through the process above, and have someone else review and merge
in your changes. The rule is that all changes must be reviewed by a
developer on the project (that didn't write the code) to ensure that
all changes go through a code review process.

Having someone other than the author of the topic branch recorded as
performing the merge is the record that they performed the code
review.

* Merging topic branches

When merging code from a topic branch into the integration branch
(Ex: master, 2.7.x, 1.6.x, etc.), there should always be a merge
commit. You can accomplish this by always providing the `--no-ff`
flag to `git merge`.

git merge --no-ff --log tickets/master/1234-fix-something-broken

The reason for always forcing this merge commit is that it
provides a consistent way to look up what changes & commits were
in a topic branch, whether that topic branch had one, or 500
commits. For example, if the merge commit had an abbreviated
SHA-1 of `coffeebad`, then you could use the following `git log`
invocation to show you which commits it brought in:

git log coffeebad^1..coffeebad^2

The following would show you which changes were made on the topic
branch:

git diff coffeebad^1...coffeebad^2

Because we _always_ merge the topic branch into the integration
branch the first parent (`^1`) of a merge commit will be the most
recent commit on the integration branch from just before we merged
in the topic, and the second parent (`^2`) will always be the most
recent commit that was made in the topic branch. This also serves
as the record of who performed the code review, as mentioned
above.
* #puppet-dev IRC channel on freenode.org

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