This repository operates an open contributor model where anyone is welcome to contribute towards development in the form of peer review, testing and patches. This document explains the practical process and guidelines for contributing.
The codebase is maintained using the "contributor workflow" where everyone without exception contributes patch proposals using "pull requests" (PRs). This facilitates social contribution, easy testing and peer review.
To contribute a patch, the workflow is as follows:
- Clone the repository
- Create topic branch
- Commit patches
In general, commits should be atomic and diffs should be easy to read. For this reason, do not mix any formatting fixes or code moves with actual code changes.
Make sure each individual commit is hygienic: that it builds successfully on its own without warnings, errors, regressions, or test failures.
Commit messages should be verbose by default consisting of a short subject line (50 chars max), a blank line and detailed explanatory text as separate paragraph(s), unless the title alone is self-explanatory (like "Correct typo in bar/foo.rs") in which case a single title line is sufficient. Commit messages should be helpful to people reading your code in the future, so explain the reasoning for your decisions. Further explanation here.
Commit messages should follow the Conventional commits specification and may use optional scope as defined in next section.
If a particular commit references another issue, please add the reference. For
example: refs #1234 or fixes #4321. Using the fixes or closes keywords
will cause the corresponding issue to be closed when the pull request is merged.
Commit messages should never contain any @ mentions (usernames prefixed with "@").
Please refer to the Git manual for more information about Git.
- Push changes to your branch
- Create pull request
Scopes are used to define which component or area if affected by the changes. Scopes are optional but recommended if applicable. Some predefined scope exists but you can create new if necessary or if no predefined scope match what you are changing. By convention it is better to have a single scope but multiple scopes can be provided, separated by comma.
Here's a list of predefined scopes:
protocolfor changes to protocol critical codedocfor changes to the documentationlogfor changes to log messagesnetorp2pfor changes to the peer-to-peer network coderefactorfor structural changes that do not change behaviorrpcorrestfor changes to the RPC or REST APIsscriptfor changes to the scripts and toolstest,qaorcifor changes to the unit tests, QA tests or CI codeconfigfor changes to cargo, toml, crates organization- package name for changes related to a particular package
Commit message examples:
feat(protocol): Fetch the samples from the double echo
fix(net): Adapt the peer discovery with kademlia
chore(log): Fix typo in log message
The title of the pull request should follow the Conventional commits specification and can define a scope as well (see section above).
The body of the pull request should contain sufficient description of what the patch does, and even more importantly, why, with justification and reasoning.
The description for a new pull request should not contain any @ mentions. The
PR description will be included in the commit message when the PR is merged and
any users mentioned in the description will be annoyingly notified each time a
fork copies the merge. Instead, make any username mentions in a
subsequent comment to the PR.
At this stage, one should expect comments and review from other contributors. You can add more commits to your pull request by committing them locally and pushing to your branch.
You are expected to reply to any review comments before your pull request is merged. You may update the code or reject the feedback if you do not agree with it, but you should express so in a reply. If there is outstanding feedback and you are not actively working on it, your pull request may be closed.
Please refer to the peer review section below for more details.
If your pull request contains fixup commits (commits that change the same line of code repeatedly) or too fine-grained commits, you may be asked to squash your commits before it will be reviewed. The basic squashing workflow is shown below.
git checkout your_branch_name
git rebase -i HEAD~n
# n is normally the number of commits in the pull request.
# Set commits (except the one in the first line) from 'pick' to 'squash', save and quit.
# On the next screen, edit/refine commit messages.
# Save and quit.
git push -f # (force push to GitHub)
Please update the resulting commit message, if needed. It should read as a coherent message. In most cases, this means not just listing the interim commits.
Please refrain from creating several pull requests for the same change. Use the pull request that is already open (or was created earlier) to amend changes. This preserves the discussion and review that happened earlier for the respective change set.
The length of time required for peer review is unpredictable and will vary from pull request to pull request.
When a pull request conflicts with the target branch, you may be asked to rebase it on top of the current target branch.
git fetch https://github.com/topos-protocol/topos # Fetch the latest upstream commit
git rebase FETCH_HEAD # Rebuild commits on top of the new base
This project aims to have a clean git history, where code changes are only made in non-merge commits. This simplifies auditability because merge commits can be assumed to not contain arbitrary code changes.
After a rebase, reviewers are encouraged to sign off on the force push.
The Squash and Merge is used to integrate the changes into the main branch.
Patch sets should always be focused. For example, a pull request could add a feature, fix a bug, or refactor code; but not a mixture. Please also avoid super pull requests which attempt to do too much, are overly large, or overly complex as this makes review difficult.
When adding a new feature, thought must be given to the long term technical debt and maintenance that feature may require after inclusion. Before proposing a new feature that will require maintenance, please consider if you are willing to maintain it (including bug fixing). If features get orphaned with no maintainer in the future, they may be removed by the Repository Maintainer.
Refactoring is a necessary part of any software project's evolution. The following guidelines cover refactoring pull requests for the project.
There are three categories of refactoring: code-only moves, code style fixes, and code refactoring. In general, refactoring pull requests should not mix these three kinds of activities in order to make refactoring pull requests easy to review and uncontroversial. In all cases, refactoring PRs must not change the behavior of code within the pull request (bugs must be preserved as is).
Code review is an important part of the development process. As a reviewer proposing changes, you must request for those changes by choosing "Request for changes" when submitting your review. In particular, you must not Approve the PR before acknowledgement of the changes that you requested.
The following language is used within pull request comments:
- "I have tested the code", involving change-specific manual testing in addition to running the unit, functional, or fuzz tests, and in case it is not obvious how the manual testing was done, it should be described;
- "I have not tested the code, but I have reviewed it and it looks OK, I agree it can be merged";
- A "nit" refers to a trivial, often non-blocking issue.
By contributing to this repository, you agree to license your work under the MIT license. Any work contributed where you are not the original author must contain its license header with the original author(s) and source.
This is an experiment and feedback is welcome! This document may also be subject to pull-requests or changes by contributors where you believe you have something valuable to add or change.
Adapted from the contributing guidelines for the bitcoin core repository.