Psuh Codelab

[torquestomp]

Thanks for taking the time to contribute to Git! Please be advised that the
Git community does not use github.com for their contributions. Instead, we use
a mailing list ([email protected]) for code submissions, code reviews, and
bug reports. Nevertheless, you can use GitGitGadget (https://gitgitgadget.github.io/)
to conveniently send your Pull Requests commits to our mailing list.

For a single-commit pull request, please leave the pull request description
empty: your commit message itself should describe your changes.

Please read the "guidelines for contributing" linked above!

[gitgitgadget]

Welcome to GitGitGadget

Hi @torquestomp, and welcome to GitGitGadget, the GitHub App to send patch series to the Git mailing list from GitHub Pull Requests.

Please make sure that either:

• Your Pull Request has a good description, if it consists of multiple commits, as it will be used as cover letter.
• Your Pull Request description is empty, if it consists of a single commit, as the commit message should be descriptive enough by itself.

You can CC potential reviewers by adding a footer to the PR description with the following syntax:

CC: Revi Ewer <[email protected]>, Ill Takalook <[email protected]>

NOTE: DO NOT copy/paste your CC list from a previous GGG PR's description,
because it will result in a malformed CC list on the mailing list. See
example.

Also, it is a good idea to review the commit messages one last time, as the Git project expects them in a quite specific form:

• the lines should not exceed 76 columns,
• the first line should be like a header and typically start with a prefix like "tests:" or "revisions:" to state which subsystem the change is about, and
• the commit messages' body should be describing the "why?" of the change.
• Finally, the commit messages should end in a Signed-off-by: line matching the commits' author.

It is in general a good idea to await the automated test ("Checks") in this Pull Request before contributing the patches, e.g. to avoid trivial issues such as unportable code.

Contributing the patches

Before you can contribute the patches, your GitHub username needs to be added to the list of permitted users. Any already-permitted user can do that, by adding a comment to your PR of the form /allow. A good way to find other contributors is to locate recent pull requests where someone has been /allowed:

• Search: is:pr is:open "/allow"

Both the person who commented /allow and the PR author are able to /allow you.

An alternative is the channel #git-devel on the Libera Chat IRC network:

<newcontributor> I've just created my first PR, could someone please /allow me? https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/12345
<veteran> newcontributor: it is done
<newcontributor> thanks!

Once on the list of permitted usernames, you can contribute the patches to the Git mailing list by adding a PR comment /submit.

If you want to see what email(s) would be sent for a /submit request, add a PR comment /preview to have the email(s) sent to you. You must have a public GitHub email address for this. Note that any reviewers CC'd via the list in the PR description will not actually be sent emails.

After you submit, GitGitGadget will respond with another comment that contains the link to the cover letter mail in the Git mailing list archive. Please make sure to monitor the discussion in that thread and to address comments and suggestions (while the comments and suggestions will be mirrored into the PR by GitGitGadget, you will still want to reply via mail).

If you do not want to subscribe to the Git mailing list just to be able to respond to a mail, you can download the mbox from the Git mailing list archive (click the (raw) link), then import it into your mail program. If you use GMail, you can do this via:

curl -g --user "<EMailAddress>:<Password>" \
    --url "imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX" -T /path/to/raw.txt

To iterate on your change, i.e. send a revised patch or patch series, you will first want to (force-)push to the same branch. You probably also want to modify your Pull Request description (or title). It is a good idea to summarize the revision by adding something like this to the cover letter (read: by editing the first comment on the PR, i.e. the PR description):

Changes since v1:
- Fixed a typo in the commit message (found by ...)
- Added a code comment to ... as suggested by ...
...

To send a new iteration, just add another PR comment with the contents: /submit.

Need help?

New contributors who want advice are encouraged to join [email protected], where volunteers who regularly contribute to Git are willing to answer newbie questions, give advice, or otherwise provide mentoring to interested contributors. You must join in order to post or view messages, but anyone can join.

You may also be able to find help in real time in the developer IRC channel, #git-devel on Libera Chat. Remember that IRC does not support offline messaging, so if you send someone a private message and log out, they cannot respond to you. The scrollback of #git-devel is archived, though.

[dscho]

Please use your own fork for practicing how to use GitHub.

[nasamuffin]

@dscho Do we want people to be able to /preview changes like this? Or do we want them to only /preview actual changes once they are familiar with the rest of the tutorial? For example, #437 seemed OK, but that was also 5 years ago. What do we want to update the tutorial to suggest instead?

[dscho]

Do we want people to be able to /preview changes like this?

I wonder whether it would make more sense to focus more on making changes that would be acceptable to the Git reviewers first, and only when (if?) that stage is reached, start playing with /preview?

[nasamuffin]

Do we want people to be able to /preview changes like this?

I wonder whether it would make more sense to focus more on making changes that would be acceptable to the Git reviewers first

That is, "Don't send the commits from this tutorial - instead, consider , and then send those commits by publishing a PR to git/git"?

I wonder if we have such a list. It seems like a moving target, but for now things that occur to me are:

• parameterize the_repository in more places // remove USE_THE_REPOSITORY_VARIABLE from more .c files
• write unit tests
• improvements to MyFirstContribution

it'd be nice to have these efforts named in some more lively place. Maybe we can chat about it in Berlin next week.

[dscho]

Do we want people to be able to /preview changes like this?

I wonder whether it would make more sense to focus more on making changes that would be acceptable to the Git reviewers first

That is, "Don't send the commits from this tutorial - instead, consider , and then send those commits by publishing a PR to git/git"?

I'm not sure I understand.

What I am trying to say is that there is little value in pursuing the mastery of the code contribution mechanics if there is no actual code to contribute.

I wonder if we have such a list.

If you are looking for ideas what new Git contributors could work on, there's nothing official, I don't think. There is https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/issues, of course, (which some people mistake for an invitation to report bugs), there is https://lore.kernel.org/git/?q=leftoverbits (but that is seriously uncurated, and of course it is tricky to figure out whether any of those are still relevant, at least for people who are interested in their first contribution).

There also used to be something somewhere on https://crbug.com/ but I cannot find it anymore.