Update and expand contributor guide (#330)

* add key points

* add doc change instructions
add workspace slack link
(e2e doc link broken)

* e2e doc link not broken
update pymdown-extensions to 9.9 from 9.8, e2e_testing.md moved to docs dir

.gitignore

@@ -33,3 +33,6 @@ arlon
 # kuttl artifacts
 kubeconfig
 kind-logs-*
+
+#
+venv

docs/contributing.md

@@ -1,18 +1,44 @@
 # How to contribute to Arlon
+Team Arlon welcomes and encourages everyone to participate in its development via pull requests on GitHub.
+
+We prefer to take in pull requests to our active development branch i.e. the `main` branch. To report a bug or request a feature, we rely on
+GitHub issues. There are a number of points to keep in mind when submitting a feature request, reporting a bug or contributing in the development of Arlon.
+
+1. Before making a feature request, or reporting a bug please browse through the existing open issues to be sure that it hasn't been already tracked.
+1. If a feature request is subsumed by some other open issue, please add your valuable feedback as a comment to the issue.
+1. If a bug discovered by you is already being tracked, please provide additional information as you see fit(steps to reproduce, particulars of the environment, version information etc.) as a comment.
+1. Before submitting code for a new feature(or a complex, untracked bugfix) please create a new issue. This issue needs to undergo a review process which may involve a discussion on the same GitHub issue to discuss possible approaches and motivation for the said proposal.
+1. Please reach out to us on [Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/arlon-io/shared_invite/zt-1kei6vw9e-XEYe_msqgEnKEgTq2jAdrw) for discussions, help, questions and the roadmap.
 
 ## Code changes
+Open a pull request (PR) on GitHub following the typical GitHub workflow [here](https://github.com/arlonproj/arlon/pulls). Most of the new code changes
+are merged to the `main` branch except backports, bookkeeping changes, library upgrades and some bugs that manifest only a particular version. Before contributing
+new code, contributors are encouraged to either write unit tests, e2e tests or perform some form of manual validation as a sanity-check. Please adhere to standard
+good practices for Golang and do ensure that the code is properly formatted and `vet` succeeds, for which we have `fmt` and `vet` targets respectively.
 
-Open a pull request (PR) on GitHub following the typical GitHub workflow [here](https://github.com/arlonproj/arlon/pulls). 
+[//]: # (add link to e2e doc)
+Since, Arlon is a growing project various areas require improvements- improving code coverage with unit tests, [e2e tests](./e2e_testing.md), documentation, CI/CD pipelines using
+GitHub Actions are a few to name, we highly encourage to contribute to those areas to start with. The [e2e test documentation](./e2e_testing.md) is an excellent starting point
+to grasp the workings of our e2e test setup.
 
 ## Issues / Bug reports
-
-We track issue in GitHub. Report an issue [here](https://github.com/arlonproj/arlon/issues/new).
+We track issues on [GitHub](https://github.com/arlonproj/arlon/issues/). You are encouraged to browse through these, add relevant feedback, create new issues or
+participate in the development. If you are interested in a particular issue or feature request, please leave a comment to reach out to the team. In particular, the issues labeled
+as [help wanted](https://github.com/arlonproj/arlon/labels/help%20wanted) are a great starting point for adding code changes to the project.
 
 ## Documentation
 
-Fork the Arlon repository on GitHub and make the desired changes. 
+The documentation for Arlon is hosted on [Read the Docs](https://arlon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) and comprises of
+contents from the "docs" directory of Arlon source.
 
-To test your local changes, run `mkdocs serve`
+For making changes to the documentation, please follow the below steps:
 
-To publish the changes, just push the changes to your fork repository and open a PR (pull request). 
-Once your PR is accepted by one of the maintainers/ owners of Arlon project, the Arlon website will be updated.
+1. Fork the Arlon repository on GitHub and make the desired changes.
+1. Prerequisites
+    1. Ensure that `python3`, `pip3` is installed.
+    1. Optionally, create a `venv` by running `python3 -m venv ./venv` to create a virtual environment if you don't have one.
+    1. From the root of the Arlon repository, run `pip3 install -r docs/requirements.txt` to install `mkdocs` and other pre-requisites.
+1. To test your local changes, run `mkdocs serve` from the repository root.
+    1. This starts a local server to host the documentation website where you can preview the changes.
+1. To publish the changes, just push the changes to your fork repository and open a PR (pull request).
+1. Once your PR is accepted by one of the maintainers/ owners of Arlon project, the Arlon website will be updated.

docs/requirements.txt

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 mkdocs==1.4.2
 mkdocs-material==8.5.10
-pymdown-extensions==9.8
+pymdown-extensions==9.9
 mkdocs_pymdownx_material_extras==2.3

mkdocs.yml

@@ -42,7 +42,8 @@ nav:
     - Installation: 'installation.md'
     - Tutorial: 'tutorial.md'        
     - Development:
-      - Setup: 'dev_setup.md'    
+      - Setup: 'dev_setup.md'
+      - E2E Tests: 'e2e_testing.md'
       - Contributing: 'contributing.md'
       - Help with MkDocs: 'docs_help.md'