Improve Contributing guide

[RichardChukwu]

This PR is part of Add Contributing guide to repos

This update aims to make it easier for contributors to get started with the project and follow best practices while contributing while following a consistent pattern for a setup guide across the Otel ecosystem.

Certain info was taken from the DEVELOPMENT.md guide to create this

Please review and let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback.

[welcome]

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[spadger]

Hi

I did my first work on this repo a few days ago, and the makefile doesn't work straight after a clone because of this line

include .env

I see what it does now, but some guidance on how to provision one would have been helpful

[brettmc]

How to set up .env is at the very top of DEVELOPMENT.md

[spadger]

Oh bloody hell. I did look for something like development.md, totally missed the link in the main readme and then wondered why contributing.md was so slim. My fault 🤠

[brettmc]

A lot of this seems to be duplicate info from DEVELOPMENT.md - I don't mind which is the source of truth, but I would prefer there was just one version of the truth. Since you're aligning multiple SIGs contribution guides, maybe removing double-ups from development guide?

[RichardChukwu]

A lot of this seems to be duplicate info from DEVELOPMENT.md - I don't mind which is the source of truth, but I would prefer there was just one version of the truth. Since you're aligning multiple SIGs contribution guides, maybe removing double-ups from development guide?

About this, I asked during SIG call attended and the idea was, having information that is relevant to a contributor not a user in the contributing guide was necessary, and apparently most of that info is already in the development guide.

Maybe it can be removed from the development guide instead?

[brettmc]

Maybe it can be removed from the development guide instead?

I think so - both DEVELOPMENT and CONTRIBUTING seem to serve the same purpose, so how about CONTRIBUTING completely replaces DEVELOPMENT, and remove the latter?

[RichardChukwu]

Maybe it can be removed from the development guide instead?

I think so - both DEVELOPMENT and CONTRIBUTING seem to serve the same purpose, so how about CONTRIBUTING completely replaces DEVELOPMENT, and remove the latter?

That can work, so are you removing it?

[brettmc]

That can work, so are you removing it?

This is your PR, you're doing it :)
Where I think this is heading is that instead of creating a new CONTRIBUTING, you're renaming DEVELOPMENT to CONTRIBUTING and aligning it to the standards you've been asked to promote.

[RichardChukwu]

That can work, so are you removing it?

This is your PR, you're doing it :) Where I think this is heading is that instead of creating a new CONTRIBUTING, you're renaming DEVELOPMENT to CONTRIBUTING and aligning it to the standards you've been asked to promote.

The CONTRIBUTING file already has major info from the DEVELOPMENT to create this PR though, so would it be better to just take current info as is and edit into the DEVELOPMENT guide and rename?

[brettmc]

The CONTRIBUTING file already has major info from the DEVELOPMENT to create this PR though, so would it be better to just take current info as is and edit into the DEVELOPMENT guide and rename?

I think that's the same thing. End result: DEVELOPMENT no longer exists, CONTRIBUTING contains all useful info from DEVELOPMENT and is in the format you want.