Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Add contributing and maintainer guidelines.
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
Signed-off-by: Chris Aniszczyk <[email protected]>
  • Loading branch information
caniszczyk committed May 3, 2016
1 parent e3fbd39 commit fcc7f42
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 2 changed files with 237 additions and 0 deletions.
116 changes: 116 additions & 0 deletions CONTRIBUTING.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
## Contribution Guidelines

### Pull requests are always welcome

We are always thrilled to receive pull requests, and do our best to
process them as fast as possible. Not sure if that typo is worth a pull
request? Do it! We will appreciate it.

If your pull request is not accepted on the first try, don't be
discouraged! If there's a problem with the implementation, hopefully you
received feedback on what to improve.

We're trying very hard to keep the project lean and focused. We don't want it
to do everything for everybody. This means that we might decide against
incorporating a new feature.


### Conventions

Fork the repo and make changes on your fork in a feature branch:

- If it's a bugfix branch, name it XXX-something where XXX is the number of the
issue
- If it's a feature branch, create an enhancement issue to announce your
intentions, and name it XXX-something where XXX is the number of the issue.

Submit unit tests for your changes. Go has a great test framework built in; use
it! Take a look at existing tests for inspiration. Run the full test suite on
your branch before submitting a pull request.

Update the documentation when creating or modifying features. Test
your documentation changes for clarity, concision, and correctness, as
well as a clean documentation build. See ``docs/README.md`` for more
information on building the docs and how docs get released.

Write clean code. Universally formatted code promotes ease of writing, reading,
and maintenance. Always run `gofmt -s -w file.go` on each changed file before
committing your changes. Most editors have plugins that do this automatically.

Pull requests descriptions should be as clear as possible and include a
reference to all the issues that they address.

Pull requests must not contain commits from other users or branches.

Commit messages must start with a capitalized and short summary (max. 50
chars) written in the imperative, followed by an optional, more detailed
explanatory text which is separated from the summary by an empty line.

Code review comments may be added to your pull request. Discuss, then make the
suggested modifications and push additional commits to your feature branch. Be
sure to post a comment after pushing. The new commits will show up in the pull
request automatically, but the reviewers will not be notified unless you
comment.

Before the pull request is merged, make sure that you squash your commits into
logical units of work using `git rebase -i` and `git push -f`. After every
commit the test suite should be passing. Include documentation changes in the
same commit so that a revert would remove all traces of the feature or fix.

Commits that fix or close an issue should include a reference like `Closes #XXX`
or `Fixes #XXX`, which will automatically close the issue when merged.

### Sign your work

The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the
patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to
pass it on as an open-source patch. The rules are pretty simple: if you
can certify the below (from
[developercertificate.org](http://developercertificate.org/)):

```
Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1
Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
660 York Street, Suite 102,
San Francisco, CA 94110 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
have the right to submit it under the open source license
indicated in the file; or
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
license and I have the right under that license to submit that
work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
in the file; or
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
it.
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
this project or the open source license(s) involved.
```

then you just add a line to every git commit message:

Signed-off-by: Joe Smith <[email protected]>

using your real name (sorry, no pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.)

You can add the sign off when creating the git commit via `git commit -s`.
121 changes: 121 additions & 0 deletions MAINTAINERS_GUIDE.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
## Introduction

Dear maintainer. Thank you for investing the time and energy to help
make this project as useful as possible. Maintaining a project is difficult,
sometimes unrewarding work. Sure, you will get to contribute cool
features to the project. But most of your time will be spent reviewing,
cleaning up, documenting, answering questions, justifying design
decisions - while everyone has all the fun! But remember - the quality
of the maintainers work is what distinguishes the good projects from the
great. So please be proud of your work, even the unglamourous parts,
and encourage a culture of appreciation and respect for *every* aspect
of improving the project - not just the hot new features.

This document is a manual for maintainers old and new. It explains what
is expected of maintainers, how they should work, and what tools are
available to them.

This is a living document - if you see something out of date or missing,
speak up!

## What are a maintainer's responsibility?

It is every maintainer's responsibility to:

* 1) Expose a clear roadmap for improving their component.
* 2) Deliver prompt feedback and decisions on pull requests.
* 3) Be available to anyone with questions, bug reports, criticism etc.
on their component. This includes IRC and GitHub issues and pull requests.
* 4) Make sure their component respects the philosophy, design and
roadmap of the project.

## How are decisions made?

Short answer: with pull requests to the project repository.

This project is an open-source project with an open design philosophy. This
means that the repository is the source of truth for EVERY aspect of the
project, including its philosophy, design, roadmap and APIs. *If it's
part of the project, it's in the repo. It's in the repo, it's part of
the project.*

As a result, all decisions can be expressed as changes to the
repository. An implementation change is a change to the source code. An
API change is a change to the API specification. A philosophy change is
a change to the philosophy manifesto. And so on.

All decisions affecting this project, big and small, follow the same 3 steps:

* Step 1: Open a pull request. Anyone can do this.

* Step 2: Discuss the pull request. Anyone can do this.

* Step 3: Accept (`LGTM`) or refuse a pull request. The relevant maintainers do
this (see below "Who decides what?")

### I'm a maintainer, should I make pull requests too?

Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be
made through a pull request.

## Who decides what?

All decisions are pull requests, and the relevant maintainers make
decisions by accepting or refusing the pull request. Review and acceptance
by anyone is denoted by adding a comment in the pull request: `LGTM`.
However, only currently listed `MAINTAINERS` are counted towards the required
two LGTMs.

Overall the maintainer system works because of mutual respect across the
maintainers of the project. The maintainers trust one another to make decisions
in the best interests of the project. Sometimes maintainers can disagree and
this is part of a healthy project to represent the point of views of various people.
In the case where maintainers cannot find agreement on a specific change the
role of a Chief Maintainer comes into play.

The Chief Maintainer for the project is responsible for overall architecture
of the project to maintain conceptual integrity. Large decisions and
architecture changes should be reviewed by the chief maintainer.
The current chief maintainer for the project is the first person listed
in the MAINTAINERS file.

Even though the maintainer system is built on trust, if there is a conflict
with the chief maintainer on a decision, their decision can be challenged
and brought to the technical oversight board if two-thirds of the
maintainers vote for an appeal. It is expected that this would be a
very exceptional event.


### How are maintainers added?

The best maintainers have a vested interest in the project. Maintainers
are first and foremost contributors that have shown they are committed to
the long term success of the project. Contributors wanting to become
maintainers are expected to be deeply involved in contributing code,
pull request review, and triage of issues in the project for more than two months.

Just contributing does not make you a maintainer, it is about building trust
with the current maintainers of the project and being a person that they can
depend on and trust to make decisions in the best interest of the project. The
final vote to add a new maintainer should be approved by over 66% of the current
maintainers with the chief maintainer having veto power. In case of a veto,
conflict resolution rules expressed above apply. The voting period is
five business days on the Pull Request to add the new maintainer.


### What is expected of maintainers?

Part of a healthy project is to have active maintainers to support the community
in contributions and perform tasks to keep the project running. Maintainers are
expected to be able to respond in a timely manner if their help is required on specific
issues where they are pinged. Being a maintainer is a time consuming commitment and should
not be taken lightly.

When a maintainer is unable to perform the required duties they can be removed with
a vote by 66% of the current maintainers with the chief maintainer having veto power.
The voting period is ten business days. Issues related to a maintainer's performance should
be discussed with them among the other maintainers so that they are not surprised by
a pull request removing them.



0 comments on commit fcc7f42

Please sign in to comment.