Thank you for taking the time to contribute. We appreciate it!
There are two ways to contribute - via issues, which are used for discussion, and pull requests, which are concrete proposals of change.
The project's Issues Page is a forum to discuss both major and minor issues related to developing the Beacon API. It also serves as the means for collaborating with the group and discussing contributions that will ultimately lead to changes to the API. See the Issue section below for specifics on how issues are resolved by the community.
The way to contribute development effort and code to the project is via GitHub pull requests. GitHub provides a nice overview on how to create a pull request. Pull Requests should usually be made against the develop branch.
Some general rules to follow:
- Create a branch for each update that you're working on. These branches are often called "feature" or "topic" branches. Any changes that you push to your feature branch will automatically be shown in the pull request.
- Keep your pull requests as small as possible. Large pull requests are hard to review. Try to break up your changes into self-contained and incremental pull requests.
- The first line of commit messages should be a short (<80 character) summary, followed by an empty line and then any details that you want to share about the commit.
- Please try to follow the existing syntax style.
Once a pull request or issue have been submitted, anyone can comment or vote on to express their opinion following the Apache voting system. Quick summary:
- +1 something you agree with
- -1 if you have a strong objection to an issue, which will be taken very seriously. A -1 vote should provide an alternative solution.
- +0 or -0 for neutral comments or weak opinions.
- It's okay to have input without voting.
- Silence gives assent.
A pull request is ready to be merged when either of the following is true:
- A pull request has at least two +1 votes, no -1 votes, and has been open for at least 3 days.
- A pull request has no -1 votes, and has been open for at least 14 days.
We sometimes waive the time constraint for cosmetic-only changes -- use good judgment. If an issue gets any -1 votes, the comments on the issue need to reach consensus before the issue can be resolved one way or the other. There isn't any strict time limit on a contentious issue.
The project will strive for full consensus on everything until it runs into a problem with this model.
Our workflow is based on Gitflow, which defines a strict branching model designed around the project release. This workflow uses two branches to record the history of the project. The master branch stores the official release history, and the develop branch serves as an integration branch for features. Aside from these two main branches, the workflow utilizes topic and release branches.
If you wish to collaborate on a new feature with other GA4GH members you can ask that a topic branch be created. Since Github does not allow pull requests against branches that do not yet exist, you will have to create an issue asking for the topic branch to be created.
Once a topic branch exists, pull requests can be made against it in the usual way. It may also be brought up to date with new changes merged into develop by anyone with commit access, if the changes produce merely a fast-forward merge for each constituent branch. However, if changes from the develop branch create a new merge commit in or or more of the repositories, that commit needs to be reviewed in a pull request.
Changes made in a topic branch can be merged into develop by creating and then resolving in the normal way a pull request against the develop branch.
Topic branches that have been merged into develop and that are no longer being developed upon should be deleted (they will still appear in the git history).
From time to time the group will make a release. This is achieved by creating a branch named "release-foo", where foo is the release name. Only bug fixes are allowed to release branches. To refer to a specific version of a release branch either the commit id can be used, or alternatively (better), a tag can be created (which should be replicated across repositories).