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Contributing

Guidelines

When to Search the Issue Tracker

If any of the following apply:

  • You believe you found a bug. It might already be logged, or even have a fix underway!
  • You have an idea for an enhancement or new feature. Before you start coding away and submit a PR for your work, consult the issue tracker.
  • You just want to find something to work on.

When to Submit a New Issue

New issues may be submitted for enhancement requests as well as bug reports. However, we ask that you please search first for similar existing issues to avoid posting a duplicate.

You are strongly advised to submit a new issue when you plan to perform work and submit a pull request (PR). See When to Submit a Pull Request below.

A related matter of GitHub etiquette is when and how to post comments on Issues or PRs. Instead of simply posting "mee to! plus one", you can use the emoji responses to give a +1 or thumbs up. Feel free to comment if you have more to add to the conversation.

When to Submit a Pull Request

Before submitting a PR, check the issue tracker for existing issues or relevant discussion. See what has been done, if anything. Perhaps there is good reason why certain changes have not already been made.

If the planned commits will involve significant effort on your part, you definitely want to either (1) submit a new issue, or (2) announce your intention to work on an existing issue. Why? Someone else could already be working on the problem. Duplicating work really sucks. Also, there may be good reason why the change is not appropriate at the time. The best way to check is to head to the issue tracker.

Only submit a PR once the intended edits are either done or nearing completion. When submitting a PR with incomplete work, "Work in progress" or "WIP" should be prefixed to the PR title or prominently displayed in the description.

How to Contribute

Suggested Toolkit

  • Go language distribution - latest release or latest-1 (e.g. 1.8.3 and 1.9). download
  • git client with command line support. download
  • GitHub account
  • Visual Studio Code with Go extension plus gometalinter
  • coffee, preferably black. some good stuff

Quick Start

  1. Fork the repository on GitHub. Just click the little Fork button at https://github.com/decred/dcrdata
  2. Clone your newly forked dcrdata repository
git clone [email protected]:my-user-name/dcrdata.git
  1. Make a branch for your planned work, based on master
git checkout -b my-great-stuff master
  1. Make edits. Review changes:
git status
git diff
  1. Commit your work
# pick files you modified
git add -u
# don't forget to add that new file you made too
git add newfile.go
# one more check
git status
# make the commit
git commit # type a good commit message
  1. Push your commit to GitHub

Assuming origin is the name of the remote used for your repository:

git push -u origin my-great-stuff
  1. Create the pull request

At the main dcrdata repo page (not your fork) you may find a button suggesting that you might want to create a PR from a branch you just pushed. "Compare & pull request" it will say on a big green button. Click it and it will start form to open a new pull request. Always:

  • Type a detailed comment for the changes you are proposing. Include motivation and a description of the code change.
  • Highlight any breaking changes. This includes any syntax changes, added or removed struct fields, interface changes, file renames or deletions, etc.
  • Scroll down and review the code diffs. Verify that the changes are what you expect to see based on your earlier review of the diffs and your git commit log (you did that, right?).

Excellent PR guidelines from Kubernetes project.

Go Development Tips

Use code linters. gometalinter is suggested to run the whole lot.

Always go fmt your code before committing.

Read Effective Go.