TiddlyWiki5/contributing.md

<h1 class="">Contributing to <a class="tc-tiddlylink tc-tiddlylink-resolves" href="https://tiddlywiki.com/static/TiddlyWiki5.html">TiddlyWiki5</a></h1><p>Here we focus on contributions via <a class="tc-tiddlylink tc-tiddlylink-resolves" href="https://tiddlywiki.com/static/GitHub.html">GitHub</a> Pull Requests but there are many other ways that anyone can help the <a class="tc-tiddlylink tc-tiddlylink-resolves" href="https://tiddlywiki.com/static/TiddlyWiki.html">TiddlyWiki</a> project, such as <a class="tc-tiddlylink tc-tiddlylink-resolves" href="https://tiddlywiki.com/static/ReportingBugs.html">reporting bugs</a> or helping to <a class="tc-tiddlylink tc-tiddlylink-resolves" href="https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Improving%2520TiddlyWiki%2520Documentation.html">improve our documentation</a>.</p><h1 class="">Rules for Pull Requests</h1><p>PRs must meet these minimum requirements before they can be considered for merging:</p><ul><li>The material in the PR must be free of licensing restrictions. Which means that either:<ul><li>The author must hold the copyright in all of the material themselves</li><li>The material must be licensed under a license compatible with <a class="tc-tiddlylink tc-tiddlylink-resolves" href="https://tiddlywiki.com/static/TiddlyWiki.html">TiddlyWiki</a>'s BSD license</li></ul></li><li>The author must sign the Contributors License Agreement (see below)</li><li>Each PR should only make a single feature change</li><li>The title of the PR should be 50 characters or less</li><li>The title of the PR should be capitalised, and should not end with a period</li><li>The title of the PR should be written in the imperative mood. See below</li><li>Adequate explanation in the body of the PR for the motivation and implementation of the change. Focus on the <em>why</em> and <em>what</em>, rather than the <em>how</em></li><li>PRs must be self-contained. Although they can link to material elsewhere, everything needed to understand the intention of the PR should be included</li><li>Documentation as appropriate for end-users or developers</li><li>Observe the coding style</li><li>Read the developers documentation</li><li>Please open a consultation issue prior to investing time in making a large PR</li></ul><h2 class="">Imperative Mood for PR Titles</h2><p>The "imperative mood" means written as if giving a command or instruction. See <a class="tc-tiddlylink-external" href="https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/#imperative" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this post</a> for more details, but the gist is that the title of the PR should make sense when used to complete the sentence "If applied, this commit will...". So for example, these are good PR titles:</p><ul><li>If applied, this commit will <em>update the contributing guidelines</em></li><li>If applied, this commit will <em>change css-escape-polyfill to a $tw.utils method</em></li><li>If applied, this commit will <em>make it easier to subclass the wikitext parser with a custom rule set</em></li></ul><p>These a poorly worded PR titles:</p><ul><li><strike>If applied, this commit will <em>edit text widgets should use default text for missing fields</em></strike></li><li><strike>If applied, this commit will <em>signing the CLA</em></strike></li><li><strike>If applied, this commit will <em>don't crash if options.event is missing</em></strike></li></ul><p>PR titles may also include a short prefix to indicate the subsystem to which they apply. For example:</p><ul><li><em>Menu plugin: Include menu text in aerial rotator</em></li></ul><h1 class="">Commenting on Pull Requests</h1><p>One of the principles of open source is that many pairs of eyes on the code can improve quality. So, we welcome comments and critiques of pending PRs. <a class="tc-tiddlylink-external" href="https://conventionalcomments.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Conventional Comments</a> has some techniques to help make comments as constructive and actionable as possible. Notably, they recommend prefixing a comment with a label to clarify the intention:</p><table><tbody><tr class="evenRo
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