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Contributing to This Book

🏷️sec_how_to_contribute

Contributions by readers help us improve this book. If you find a typo, an outdated link, something where you think we missed a citation, where the code does not look elegant or where an explanation is unclear, please contribute back and help us help our readers. While in regular books the delay between print runs (and thus between typo corrections) can be measured in years, it typically takes hours to days to incorporate an improvement in this book. This is all possible due to version control and continuous integration testing. To do so you need to install Git and submit a pull request to the GitHub repository. When your pull request is merged into the code repository by the author, you will become a contributor. In a nutshell the process works as described in :numref:fig_contribute.

Contributing to the book. 🏷️fig_contribute

From Reader to Contributor in 6 Steps

We will walk you through the steps in detail. If you are already familiar with Git you can skip this section. For concreteness we assume that the contributor's user name is "astonzhang".

Installing Git

The Git open source book describes how to install Git. This typically works via apt install git on Ubuntu Linux, by installing the Xcode developer tools on macOS, or by using GitHub's desktop client. If you do not have a GitHub account, you need to sign up for one.

Logging in to GitHub

Enter the address of the book's code repository in your browser. Click on the Fork button in the red box at the top-right of :numref:fig_git_fork, to make a copy of the repository of this book. This is now your copy and you can change it any way you want.

The code repository page. :width:700px 🏷️fig_git_fork

Now, the code repository of this book will be copied to your username, such as astonzhang/d2l-en shown at the top-left of the screenshot :numref:fig_git_forked.

Copy the code repository. :width:700px 🏷️fig_git_forked

Cloning the Repository

To clone the repository (i.e., to make a local copy) we need to get its repository address. The green button in :numref:fig_git_clone displays this. Make sure that your local copy is up to date with the main repository if you decide to keep this fork around for longer. For now simply follow the instructions in :numref:chap_installation to get started. The main difference is that you are now downloading your own fork of the repository.

Git clone. :width:700px 🏷️fig_git_clone

# Replace your_github_username with your GitHub username
git clone https://github.com/your_github_username/d2l-en.git

Editing the Book and Push

Now it is time to edit the book. It is best to edit the notebooks in Jupyter following instructions in :numref:sec_jupyter. Make the changes and check that they are OK. Assume we have modified a typo in the file ~/d2l-en/chapter_appendix_tools/how-to-contribute.md. You can then check which files you have changed:

At this point Git will prompt that the chapter_appendix_tools/how-to-contribute.md file has been modified.

mylaptop:d2l-en me$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

	modified:   chapter_appendix_tools/how-to-contribute.md

After confirming that this is what you want, execute the following command:

git add chapter_appendix_tools/how-to-contribute.md
git commit -m 'fix typo in git documentation'
git push

The changed code will then be in your personal fork of the repository. To request the addition of your change, you have to create a pull request for the official repository of the book.

Pull Request

As shown in :numref:fig_git_newpr, go to your fork of the repository on GitHub and select "New pull request". This will open up a screen that shows you the changes between your edits and what is current in the main repository of the book.

Pull Request. :width:700px 🏷️fig_git_newpr

Submitting Pull Request

Finally, submit a pull request by clicking the button as shown in :numref:fig_git_createpr. Make sure to describe the changes you have made in the pull request. This will make it easier for the authors to review it and to merge it with the book. Depending on the changes, this might get accepted right away, rejected, or more likely, you will get some feedback on the changes. Once you have incorporated them, you are good to go.

Create Pull Request. :width:700px 🏷️fig_git_createpr

Your pull request will appear among the list of requests in the main repository. We will make every effort to process it quickly.

Summary

  • You can use GitHub to contribute to this book.
  • Forking a repository is the first step to contributing, since it allows you to edit things locally and only contribute back once you are ready.
  • Pull requests are how contributions are being bundled up. Try not to submit huge pull requests since this makes them hard to understand and incorporate. Better send several smaller ones.

Exercises

  1. Star and fork the d2l-en repository.
  2. Find some code that needs improvement and submit a pull request.
  3. Find a reference that we missed and submit a pull request.

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