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First Timers Only

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Re: First Timers Only

#51

Post by jakejake »

This is really great. I've contributed to lots of projects and it would be nice if maintainers were all this thoughtful. If not actively encouraging people to get involved, it would be nice of maintainers to simply acknowledge or appreciate someone's effort.

I've contributed a lot of code and have had vastly different experiences. Sometimes people are excited and accept a PR without question. Some people just ignore PRs. Some people make you feel as though you've just spit in their face. I had one pull request that I thought was reasonable which was met with a ridicule from the maintainer at how useless my idea was (to him). I'm a seasoned programmer with my own projects and a lot of code under my belt but, even knowing how these things work, that one really soured me on his project. I can't imagine if a novice who was excited at their first PR was treated so poorly.

If I could suggest anything to maintainers, it would be to simply appreciate that somebody was trying to contribute. If their code doesn't meet your goals or standards, try to still respect that they spent some time on your project.

Re: First Timers Only

#52

Post by notatoad »

diggan wrote: post #41
hartator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pull request, that's git terminoly to merge external code to an existing project.

I don't want to nitpick but for a Git beginner (not necessarily you but others reading here), it's important to know that "pull request" is really a Github concept, not a Git one.

It may not be a part of the actual git software package, but it's a feature of many Git workflows, not just GitHub.

Re: First Timers Only

#53

Post by realityking »

ultrafez wrote: post #50
realityking wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pull request is very much git terminology. Here's the documentation for 'git request-pull': https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull

If you're being picky, then I can be picky too: the concept of a "pull request" isn't defined in that manpage, only the command "request-pull" is. A "pull request" is an entity in itself. The command may exist within git, but it's not a part of most people's git workflows. "Pull Request" is a term that's far more commonly attributed-to and associated with tools like GitHub, Gitlab, Bitbucket etc. Did you know that gi…

The claim was that a pull request is not a git concept, I think that's demonstratively false. I won't deny that GitHub popularized it, but they have by no means invented it.

As another piece of evidence, see this page https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches

It says Linus (and other kernel maintainer) will want a pull request from you if you want to contribute code, yet he thinks GitHubs version of pull request is, well, lacking (http://www.wired.com/2012/05/torvalds_github/)

Re: First Timers Only

#54

Post by chowes »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #47

Great read. My favorite part is this bullet point: > Use npm scripts so people don’t have to understand or globally install any build tools I do this on every project I work on. In fact, where possible, I completely skip globals entirely (for instance in my msngr.js library it uses Grunt but it executes grunt locally without it being installed globally on the machine). I think it's really important that anyone can go…

100% agree.. and just as important as ease of starting: ease of finishing. make all of your tests / linters / etc. runnable via a simple npm run.

there's overhead in setting this up, but i can remember several times where i have pulled the code down, made my changes, and gave up when trying to figure out how the maintainer wants my code formatted / tested.

Re: First Timers Only

#55

Post by nartz »

I think the KEY thing here is that you wrote the tests, that gave someone the 'confidence' to say whether or not they were even on the right track - this is amazing - the tests give exactly the right context for someone to dive into the code.

Re: First Timers Only

#56

Post by hyperchase »

ywecur wrote: post #36
anonymoushn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's tied up with how git works, which is a huge mess. You really do "commit a fix" but you commit it to your own git repository, then you make a "pull request" to the owner of the main repository, asking them to pull in your fix.

It has nothing to do with Git, it's just the name Github uses. GitLab calles it a "Merge request", which is more fitting IMO.

Pull-request makes sense in Github, because the typical work-flow for open-source on Github is to fork the repo you want to contribute to. Hence, the maintainer has to pull the code from you.

Merge-request makes more sense in Gitlab because they're main use-case is as a self-hosted internal tool where developers most-likely are pushing all of their feature branches to a central repository and asking for the branch to be merged into the mainline branch.

Re: First Timers Only

#57

Post by eitland »

eitland wrote: post #48

Jenkins has been filling my twitter feed with information for new contributors lately under the hashtag #hacksgiving I think. Edit: Changed "spamming" to "filling" That was meant as a positive thing but I guess I shouldn't have used the word spamming.

Anyone care sharing why I keep getting downvoted for this one? By all means feel free but this one was more than a little puzzling to me : )

Re: First Timers Only

#59

Post by wtracy »

J_Darnley wrote: post #32

As far as I can tell this information is specific to Github and development on Github. Why is CONTRIBUTING.md important? Its just another file for someone to read alongside COPYING, INSTALL, README, TODO, and perhaps what's in the doc/ directory. And why markdown? Organising and comments are good but people have been trying to get devs to do that for decades and we're still mentioning it. "Add an up-for-grabs label"…

CONTRIBUTING.md is important because it provides an easy entry point for new developers. Out of COPYING, INSTALL, README, and TODO, where do you go to answer that question? Except for TODO, all those files are targeted at end users, not contributors. The choice of Markdown is of course entirely arbitrary.

The up-for-grabs label goes in your bug tracker. Then anyone can see it by browsing open bugs.

NPM is the package management tool used by Node, not a build tool. I think that Node having its own package manager is ridiculous, but since Node development already requires it, there's no reason for this project to not make full use of it.

Outside of using NPM, I don't see anything web-specific, and outside of Githook I don't see anything git-specific. Even Sourceforge gives you a bug tracker!

Re: First Timers Only

#60

Post by icebraining »

chunky1994 wrote: post #42
ywecur wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with Git, it's just the name Github uses. GitLab calles it a "Merge request", which is more fitting IMO.

That's actually not true. git-pull (which is where the pull request comes from) is in the git manpages. Specifically it is: Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch . Which is basically a git fetch and merge from the submitters repository to the repository they are submitting to. EDIT: Admittedly if you are talking specifically of the request part, then you are correct. However the name come…

But it makes sense in git, since it's written from the perspective of the user pulling the commits, not from the user sending them.
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