Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
216 lines (146 loc) · 8.1 KB

how-to-contribute-to-the-codebase.md

File metadata and controls

216 lines (146 loc) · 8.1 KB
Raw

Follow these guidelines to contribute to the codebase. This is highly recommended if you want to contribute regularly.

Ignoring these steps may soil your copy which makes the contributing, maintaining, and reviewing processes difficult.

Contributing to the Codebase

You can now make changes to files and commit your changes to your fork, which you can prepare by reading how to set up freecodecamp.

Follow these steps:

  1. Validate that you are on the main branch:

    git status

    You should get an output like this:

    On branch main
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/main'.

nothing to commit, working directory clean

    If you got different message, then you aren't on main or your working directory isn't clean, resolve any outstanding files/commits and checkout main:

    git checkout main

  2. Sync the latest changes from the freeCodeCamp upstream main branch to your main fork branch:

    [!WARNING] If you have any outstanding pull requests that you made from the main branch of your fork, you will lose them at the end of this step.

    You should ensure your pull request is merged by a moderator before performing this step. To avoid this scenario, you should always work on a branch other than the main.

    This step will sync the latest changes from the main repository of freeCodeCamp.

    Update your copy of the freeCodeCamp upstream repository:

    git fetch upstream

    Hard reset your main branch with the freeCodeCamp main:

    git reset --hard upstream/main

    Push your main branch to your origin to have a clean history on your fork on GitHub:

    git push origin main --force

    You can validate your current main matches the upstream/main by performing a diff:

    git diff upstream/main

    The resulting output should be empty. This process is important, because you will be rebase your branch on top of the latest upstream/main as often as possible to avoid conflicts later.

  3. Create a fresh new branch:

    Working on a separate branch for each issue helps you keep your work copy clean. You should never work on the main. This will soil your copy of freeCodeCamp and you may have to start over with a fresh clone or fork.

    Check that you are on main as explained previously, and branch off from there:

    git checkout -b fix/update-guide-for-xyz

    Your branch name should start with a fix/, feat/, docs/, etc. Avoid using issue numbers in branches. Keep them short, meaningful and unique.

    Some examples of good branch names are:

    fix/update-challenges-for-react
fix/update-guide-for-html-css
fix/platform-bug-sign-in-issues
feat/add-guide-article-for-javascript
translate/add-spanish-basic-html

  4. Edit pages and work on code in your favorite text editor.

  5. Once you are happy with the changes you should optionally run freeCodeCamp to preview the changes.

  6. Make sure you fix any errors and check the formatting of your changes.

  7. Check and confirm the files you are updating:

    git status

    This should show a list of unstaged files that you have edited.

    On branch feat/documentation
Your branch is up to date with 'upstream/feat/documentation'.

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

    modified:   CONTRIBUTING.md
    modified:   docs/README.md
    modified:   docs/how-to-setup-freecodecamp-locally.md
    modified:   docs/how-to-work-on-guide-articles.md
...

  8. Stage the changes and make a commit:

    In this step, you should only mark files that you have edited or added yourself. You can perform a reset and resolve files that you did not intend to change if needed.

    git add path/to/my/changed/file.ext

    Or you can add all the unstaged files to the staging area:

    git add .

    Only the files that were moved to the staging area will be added when you make a commit.

    git status

    Output:

    On branch feat/documentation
Your branch is up to date with 'upstream/feat/documentation'.

Changes to be committed:
(use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

    modified:   CONTRIBUTING.md
    modified:   docs/README.md
    modified:   docs/how-to-setup-freecodecamp-locally.md
    modified:   docs/how-to-work-on-guide-articles.md

    Now, you can commit your changes with a short message like so:

    git commit -m "fix: my short commit message"

    Some examples:

    fix: add test for JavaScript - for loop step
feat: add link for article for alexa skills

    Make a conventional commit message. This is a good practice as a developer, and you will be following standard practices.

    Some examples of conventional commit messages are:

    fix: improve HTML step
fix: fix build scripts for Travis-CI
feat: add link to JavaScript hoisting article
docs: update contributing guidelines

    Keep these short, not more than 50 characters. You can always add additional information in the description of the commit message.

    This does not take any more time than an unconventional message like 'update file' or 'add index.md'

    You can learn more about why you should use conventional commits here.

  9. If you realize that you need to edit a file or update the commit message after making a commit you can do so after editing the files with:

    git commit --amend

    This will open up a default text editor like nano or vi where you can edit the commit message title and add/edit the description.

  10. Next, you can push your changes to your fork:

    git push origin branch/name-here

Proposing a Pull Request (PR)

After you've committed your changes, check here for how to open a Pull Request.

Quick commands reference

A quick reference to the commands that you will need when working.

command description
pnpm test Run all JS tests in the system, including client, server, lint and challenge tests.
pnpm run test-client Run the client test suite.
pnpm run test:curriculum Run the curriculum test suite.
FCC_BLOCK='Basic HTML and HTML5' pnpm run test:curriculum Test a specific Block.
FCC_SUPERBLOCK='responsive-web-design' pnpm run test:curriculum Test a specific SuperBlock.
pnpm run test-curriculum-full-output Run the curriculum test suite, without bailing after the first error
pnpm run test-server Run the server test suite.
pnpm run e2e Run the Cypress end to end tests.
pnpm run clean Uninstalls all dependencies and cleans up caches.
pnpm run storybook Starts Storybook for component library development.