First, thanks for your initiative to help out! One of the reasons that open source is so great is because of the eagerness of others to help.
Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.
Following these guidelines helps to communicate that you respect the time of the developers managing and developing this open source project. In return, they should reciprocate that respect in addressing your issue or assessing patches and features.
Before you ask, do some searching and reading. Check the docs, Google, GitHub, and StackOverflow. If your question is something that has been answered many times before, the project maintainers might be tired of repeating themselves.
Whenever possible, ask your question on a public forum. This allows anyone to answer and makes the answer available for the next person with the same question. If all else fails, you might tweet at or email the maintainer(s).
The issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports, features requests and submitting pull requests, but please respect the following restrictions:
-
Please do not use the issue tracker for personal support requests (use Stack Overflow or IRC).
-
Please do not derail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.
A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful - thank you!
Before you submit a bug report, you should search existing issues. Be sure to check both currently open issues, as well as issues that are already closed. If you find an issue that seems to be similar to yours, read through it.
If this issue is the same as yours, you can comment with additional information to help the maintainer debug it. Adding a comment will subscribe you to email notifications, which can be helpful in getting important updates regarding the issue. If you don't have anything to add but still want to receive email updates, you can click the "watch" button at the bottom of the comments.
If you can't find anything in the existing issues, don't be shy about filing a new one.
You should be sure to include the version the project, as well as versions of
related software. For example, be sure to include the version numbers output by
the commands node --version
and npm list
. If you notice that your installed
version is not the latest, use npm update
and confirm that the issue is still
there.
Please be as thorough as possible. It helps us address the problem more quickly, so everyone wins!
Guidelines for bug reports:
-
Use the GitHub issue search — check if the issue has already been reported.
-
Check if the issue has been fixed — try to reproduce it using the latest
master
or development branch in the repository. -
Isolate the problem — create a reduced test case and a live example.
A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Please try to be as detailed as possible in your report. What is your environment? What steps will reproduce the issue? What browser(s) and OS experience the problem? What would you expect to be the outcome? All these details will help people to fix any potential bugs.
Example:
Short and descriptive example bug report title
A summary of the issue and the browser/OS environment in which it occurs. If suitable, include the steps required to reproduce the bug.
- This is the first step
- This is the second step
- Further steps, etc.
<url>
- a link to the reduced test caseAny other information you want to share that is relevant to the issue being reported. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as causing the bug, and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).
Feature requests are welcome. But take a moment to find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. It's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's developers of the merits of this feature. Please provide as much detail and context as possible.
Good pull requests - patches, improvements, new features - are a fantastic help. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits.
Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (e.g. implementing features, refactoring code, porting to a different language), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the project's developers might not want to merge into the project.
Before you set out to improve the code, you should have a focused idea in mind of what you want to do.
Each commit should do one thing, and each PR should be one specific improvement.
Please adhere to the coding conventions used throughout a project (indentation, accurate comments, etc.) and any other requirements (such as test coverage).
Follow this process if you'd like your work considered for inclusion in the project:
-
Fork the project, clone your fork, and configure the remotes:
# Clone your fork of the repo into the current directory $ git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/gulp-useref # Navigate to the newly cloned directory $ cd gulp-useref # Assign the original repo to a remote called "upstream" $ git remote add upstream https://github.com/jonkemp/gulp-useref
-
If you cloned a while ago, get the latest changes from upstream:
$ git checkout <dev-branch> $ git pull upstream <dev-branch>
-
Create a new topic branch (off the main project development branch) to contain your feature, change, or fix:
$ git checkout -b <topic-branch-name>
-
Add relevant tests to cover the change.
-
Make sure test-suite passes:
npm test
-
Commit your changes in logical chunks. Please adhere to these git commit message guidelines or your code is unlikely be merged into the main project. Use Git's interactive rebase feature to tidy up your commits before making them public.
-
Locally merge (or rebase) the upstream development branch into your topic branch:
$ git pull [--rebase] upstream <dev-branch>
-
Push your topic branch up to your fork:
$ git push origin <topic-branch-name>
-
Open a Pull Request with a clear title and description.
Addding files on repo
$ git commit -m "Add filename"
Updating files on repo
$ git commit -m "Update filename, filename2, filename3"
Removing files on repo
$ git commit -m "Remove filename"
Renaming files on repo
$ git commit -m "Rename filename"
Fixing errors and issues on repo
$ git commit -m "Fixed #issuenumber Message about this fix"
Adding features on repo
$ git commit -m "Add Feature: nameoffeature Message about this feature"
Updating features on repo
$ git commit -m "Update Feature: nameoffeature Message about this update"
Removing features on repo
$ git commit -m "Remove Feature: nameoffeature Message about this"
Ignoring Travis CI build on repo
$ git commit -m "Commit message here [ci-skip]"
IMPORTANT: By submitting a patch, you agree to allow the project owner to license your work under the same license as that used by the project.
Project maintainers are busy, so give them some time. Developers involved in open source often contribute to many projects. It's not uncommon for a developer to receive dozens of issues notifications a day, so be patient. Maybe the maintainer has other important things in their life that they need to address. Prioritizing those things over something on GitHub doesn't make someone lazy. The health, happiness, and wellbeing of the real person on the other end of the internet is much more important than any bug.
One of the strengths of open source is that you can always fork and fix problems yourself.
Thanks for taking the time to read this! Contributions are welcome. Hopefully, this guide will help make good contributions easier and ultimately, everyone benefits.