This document serves as contribution guidelines and the points listed should be followed for contributions to the foundation.
As is somewhat standard practice, the following should be observed:
- The usage of Markdown-formatted lists is allowed
- Paragraphs should be broken with an empty line between
- Further lines after the header should be no more than 72 characters
- Further lines, if required, should contain detailed information on:
- Implications of the changes in the commit
- Reasons the changes are required
Commits relating to one file should follow these guidelines:
- The header line should be no more than 60 characters
- The header line should contain the filename and a short description of what applying the patch will do, in the format of "If applied, this commit will..."
- The second line should be blank
Example commit message:
CONTRIBUTING.md: Establish guidelines for new commits
Implications of Changes:
- Could possibly make it harder for outsiders to contribute
- Could create bloatware in the repository data
Reasons for Changes:
- Creates a structure which can be used to avoid excessive comments
during the review process
Commits relating to multiple files should follow these guidelines:
- The header line should be no more than 50 characters
- The header line should contain a short description of what applying the patch will do, in the format of "If applied, this commit will..."
- The second line should be blank
- The third line should begin a list of changed files, with a header along the lines of "Changed Files:"
Example commit message:
Apply changes to files as per guidelines
Changed Files:
- README.md
- CONTRIBUTING.md
Reasons for Changes:
- This is an example message, but anyways: The guidelines changed, so this
commit adapts the documents to follow the new guidelines as of 2018-03-14.
Contributions to documents for the repository should follow these guidelines:
- Lines should be no more than 80 characters
- Documents should be written using standard Markdown (try to avoid using GitHub flavoring)
- Documents should use relative URLs when linking to other documents
- Links should use the format of putting a link at the bottom of the page if a line breaks 80 characters