MUST READ: Instructions for newcomer contributors

[daniel-beck]

Hey 👋 Welcome to Jenkins!

Many new contributors showed up recently, and we're a little stretched thin at the moment. If you're new here (less than a dozen or so accepted changes), please follow the rules below exactly to ensure a good experience for everyone, both new and existing contributors.

Please also read our usual contributing guidelines.

Limit the number of open pull requests you have

If you're new and unfamiliar with the development practices in this repo, please open just one pull request and wait for that to be accepted or rejected before opening another. Otherwise we may end up needing to provide the same feedback to you multiple times.

Once you're a more established contributor, you can have multiple PRs open at the same time.

Allowed open PRs: 1 + sqrt(merged_prs), rounded down. Closed PRs (not merged/accepted) do not count.

PRs merged	Open PRs allowed
0	1
1	2
2	2
3	2
4	3
5	3
6	3
7	3
8	3
9	4

If you exceed the number of open pull requests you can have, some of them may be closed without further review for this reason. That's not a rejection of the proposed change. Just re-submit it later (addressing all previous feedback).

Follow the pull request template

It's important to follow all instructions in the pull request template. Some may not apply (e.g., screenshots when you're not changing the UI), and that's fine. But please do not delete it, or even parts. Fill in everything that makes sense.

Your pull request may be closed without further review if you remove or otherwise ignore the pull request template. That's not a rejection of the proposed change. Just re-submit it later (addressing all previous feedback).

Avoid common mistakes

These are some common mistakes we're seeing newcomers make:

• Extensive code reformatting of lines not otherwise touched in the pull request. git diff or git show can help you identify accidental changes before you push them to the pull request.
• Accidentally commit unrelated files. Don't use git add . or similar. git diff --staged can show you which files you would commit.
• Apply your own standards (code structure or formatting, Maven plugins) that do not align with existing practices in this repo. Yours may objectively be superior, but that's not a change we're likely to accept from contributors who aren't maintainers. Try to make your code "blend in".

These problems are generally easy to identify before you create the pull request. If you don't identify them before creating the pull request, that makes it look like you're not paying attention to what you're doing. Reviewers need to be able to trust you to some degree before accepting your change, and these issues hurt your chances of that.

---

Thanks for reading through all of this! We hope you have a good time contributing to the Jenkins project. Please check back in from time to time to see whether anything about these rules changed.

^{Note to maintainers: Please do not comment on this issue to keep it straightforward. Apply edits as needed, otherwise let's discuss the contents elsewhere.}