Third-party patches are welcomed for improving Cosmic Ray. There is plenty of work to be done on bug fixes, documentation, new features, and improved tooling.
Although we want to keep it as easy as possible to contribute changes that get things working in your environment, there are a few guidelines that we need contributors to follow so that we can have a chance of keeping on top of things.
The easiest way to help is by submitting issues reporting defects or requesting additional features.
- Make sure you have a GitHub account
- Submit an issue, assuming one does not already exist.
- Clearly describe the issue including steps to reproduce when it is a bug.
- If appropriate, include a Cosmic Ray config file and, if possible, some way for us to get access to the code you're working with.
- Make sure you mention the earliest version that you know has the issue.
- Fork the repository on GitHub
You must own the copyright to the patch you're submitting, and be in a position to transfer the copyright to Sixty North by agreeing to the either the Individual Contributors License Agreement (for private individuals) or the Entity Contributor License Agreement (for corporations or other organisations).
Make small commits in logical units.
Ensure your code is in the spirit of PEP 8, although we accept that much of what is in PEP 8 are guidelines rather than rules, so we value readability over strict compliance.
Check for unnecessary whitespace with
git diff --check
before committing.Make sure your commit messages are in the proper format:
Issue #1234 - Make the example in CONTRIBUTING imperative and concrete Without this patch applied the example commit message in the CONTRIBUTING document is not a concrete example. This is a problem because the contributor is left to imagine what the commit message should look like based on a description rather than an example. This patch fixes the problem by making the example concrete and imperative. The first line is a real life imperative statement with an issue number from our issue tracker. The body describes the behavior without the patch, why this is a problem, and how the patch fixes the problem when applied.
Make sure you have added the necessary tests for your changes.
Run all the tests to assure nothing else was accidentally broken.
For changes of a trivial nature to comments and documentation, it is not always necessary to create a new issue. In this case, it is appropriate to start the first line of a commit with 'Doc -' instead of an issue number:
Doc - Add documentation commit example to CONTRIBUTING There is no example for contributing a documentation commit to the Cosmic Ray repository. This is a problem because the contributor is left to assume how a commit of this nature may appear. The first line is a real life imperative statement with 'Doc -' in place of what would have been the ticket number in a non-documentation related commit. The body describes the nature of the new documentation or comments added.
- Agree to the Individual Contributors License Agreement or the Entity Contributor License Agreement by attaching a copy of the current CLA to an email (so we know which version you're agreeing to). The body of the message should contain the text "I, <your name>, [representing <your company>] have read the attached CLA and agree to its terms." Send the email to [email protected]
- Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository.
- Submit a pull request to the repository in the sixty-north organization.