Contributions from the community are essential in keeping Hibernate Validator strong and successful. This guide focuses on how to contribute back to Hibernate Validator using GitHub pull requests. If you need help with cloning, compiling or setting the project up in an IDE please refer to this page.
All original contributions to Hibernate Validator are licensed under the Apache License version 2.0, or, if another license is specified as governing the file or directory being modified, such other license. The Apache License text is included verbatim in the license.txt file in the root directory of the repository.
All contributions are subject to the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). The DCO text is also included verbatim in the dco.txt file in the root directory of the repository.
If you are just getting started with Git, GitHub and/or contributing to Hibernate Validator there are a few prerequisite steps:
- Make sure you have a Hibernate JIRA account
- Make sure you have a GitHub account
- Fork the Hibernate Validator repository.
As discussed in the linked page, this also includes:
- Setting up your local git install
- Cloning your fork
If you have opened a JIRA issue but are not comfortable enough to contribute code directly, creating a self contained test case is a good first step towards contributing.
As part of our efforts to simplify access to new contributors, we provide test case templates for the Hibernate family projects.
Just fork this repository, build your test case and attach it as an archive to a JIRA issue.
Create a "topic" branch on which you will work. The convention is to name the branch using the JIRA issue key. If there is not already a JIRA issue covering the work you want to do, create one. Assuming you will be working from the main branch and working on the JIRA HV-123 :
git checkout -b HV-123 main
Code away...
The Hibernate family projects share the same style conventions. You can download the appropriate configuration files for your IDE from the IDE codestyles GitHub repository.
You can very quickly check that you have respected the formatting rules by running Checkstyle:
mvn checkstyle:check
- Make commits of logical units.
- Be sure to start the commit messages with the JIRA issue key you are working on. This is how JIRA will pick up the related commits and display them on the JIRA issue.
- Avoid formatting changes to existing code as much as possible: they make the intent of your patch less clear.
- Make sure you have added the necessary tests for your changes.
- Run all the tests to assure nothing else was accidentally broken:
mvn verify
Prior to committing, if you want to pull in the latest upstream changes (highly appreciated by the way), please use rebasing rather than merging (see instructions below). Merging creates "merge commits" that really muck up the project timeline.
Add the original Hibernate Validator repository as a remote repository called upstream:
git remote add upstream https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator.git
If you want to rebase your branch on top of the main branch, you can use the following git command:
git pull --rebase upstream main
- Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository.
- Initiate a pull request.
- Update the JIRA issue, adding a comment including a link to the created pull request.