Commit Policy

Please make sure to also read our Contributing Guidelines.

Table of Contents Scary Legal Stuff Commit Rules Commit Steps Good Practice Merging

Scary Legal Stuff

• Please be aware that any code you commit to our projects becomes the property of the OTW and will be licensed under The GNU General Public License). No take-backs. :) Don't commit code if you're not willing for it to be shared forever!
• Never commit code you didn't write yourself or code that doesn't have a suitable license.
  • If you are adding code written by someone else (for instance a third-party Rails plugin), it must have been released under a license that is the same or *more* permissive than our own license. Please do specify in your commit message how the plugin is licensed.
  • Do not submit code written by AI tools like GitHub Copilot or GitLab duo; we will not accept pull requests that contain AI-generated code.
• Never remove licensing info from code.
• Never use a decompiler or disassembler to look at proprietary code.

Commit Rules

• Your branch name should include the id of the Jira issue you are working on, e.g. AO3-1234 or AO3-1234_short_description
• Start every commit message with the issue id and include a meaningful explanation of the changes in your commit, e.g. AO3-1234 Fix typo in work.rb
• Commit only one thing at a time. Don't commit unrelated changes together, or a change and a fix at the same time.
• Make sure that you are committing only the files you need.
• Make sure your code matches the Coding Standards.
• Send in your code as a pull request on GitHub.
  • Make sure to use the template provided!

Commit Steps

• Make sure master is up-to-date first.

   git checkout master 
   git pull upstream master

• Merge your branch with master. Resolve any conflicts.

   git checkout your_branch_name
   git merge master

• Run all tests on your branch before submitting a pull request.

   bundle exec cucumber features
   bundle exec rspec spec

• Follow the steps in "Submitting a pull request" and "After submitting a pull request" on the AO3 Coding: Your First Pull Request page.

• Do something nice for yourself! :)

Good Practice

• Merge with the master branch frequently to catch any conflicts early
• If you are fixing or changing something without an issue, open one so that your change can be tested and tracked.
• If your changes include a migration, refer to the Migrations guide.

Merging

Our code reviewers with merge permissions are ariana-paris, bingeling, brianjaustin, CristinaRO, neuroalien, redsummernight, sarken, scottsds, shalott, and zz9pzza. Drive-by code review and discussion of anybody else's code is always welcome - we can all learn more - but please remember to keep it constructive.