The docs for submitting a patch describe using your "Legal Name" with
the Signed-off-by line.
In recent times, there's been a general push back[1] against the notion
that use of Signed-off-by in a project automatically requires / implies
the use of legal ("real") names and greater awareness of the downsides.
Full discussion of the problems of such policies is beyond the scope of
this commit message, but at a high level they are liable to marginalize,
disadvantage, and potentially result in harm, to contributors.
TL;DR: there are compelling reasons for a person to choose distinct
identities in different contexts & a decision to override that choice
should not be taken lightly.
A number of key projects have responded to the issues raised by making
it clear that a contributor is free to determine the identity used in
SoB lines:
* Linux has clarified[2] that they merely expect use of the
contributor's "known identity", removing the previous explicit
rejection of pseudonyms.
* CNCF has clarified[3] that the real name is simply the identity
the contributor chooses to use in the context of the community
and does not have to be a legal name, nor birth name, nor appear
on any government ID.
Since we have no intention of ever routinely checking any form of ID
documents for contributors[4], realistically we have no way of knowing
anything about the name they are using, except through chance, or
through the contributor volunteering the information. IOW, we almost
certainly already have people using pseudonyms for contributions.
This proposes to accept that reality and eliminate unnecessary friction,
by following Linux & the CNCF in merely asking that a contributors'
commonly known identity, of their choosing, be used with the SoB line.
[1] Raised in many contexts at many times, but a decent overall summary
can be read at https://drewdevault.com/2023/10/31/On-real-names.html
[2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=d4563201f33a022fc0353033d9dfeb1606a88330
[3] https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/659fd32c86dc/dco-guidelines.md
[4] Excluding the rare GPG key signing parties for regular maintainers
Reviewed-by: Peter Krempa <pkrempa@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
In the preparing patches section, note that it is possible to run CI
tests via gitlab prior to submitting patches.
Signed-off-by: Tim Small <tim@seoss.co.uk>
Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
Clarify that patches should apply cleanly to the master branch. Give
guidance for typical bug fix process for existing releases.
Signed-off-by: Tim Small <tim@seoss.co.uk>
Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
In build environments which use gcc as the default compiler, use of the
clangd LSP server (for enhanced code editing and navigation etc.) with
libvirt requires some additional configuration. Detail this and link
from `hacking.rst`.
Signed-off-by: Tim Small <tim@seoss.co.uk>
Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
The "hacking" doc details where to find the code, but not how to compile
it - link to the instructions contained in `compiling.rst`.
Signed-off-by: Tim Small <tim@seoss.co.uk>
Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
There are two guides to contributing: `hacking.rst` is focused on code
contributions, and `contributing.rst` is more general. Clarify scope of
`hacking.rst` and link to the general guide in its references.
Signed-off-by: Tim Small <tim@seoss.co.uk>
Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
I introduced support for these vim plugins several years ago
but have since moved away from them. These days developers
are likely better served by lsp-based tooling, which doesn't
require additional per-project configuration.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Ján Tomko <jtomko@redhat.com>
The old information about managing PO files was outdated, as we're
managing files in a different way with Weblate. This also introduces a
badge showing the translation progress across languages.
Reviewed-by: Pavel Hrdina <phrdina@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
We still point to git repositories hosted on libvirt.org in various
places. Replace the links to their gitlab.com equivalents.
Note that GitLab is trying to be smart here and
https://gitlab.com/libvirt/libvirt
redirects to
https://gitlab.com/libvirt/libvirt.git
when doing a 'git clone' and vice-versa when visiting from the
browser, so I only kept the .git suffix in places that explicitly
mentioned 'git clone'.
Signed-off-by: Ján Tomko <jtomko@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
It's been more than six months since we adopted GLib and we've
been pretty aggressive at replacing our homegrown APIs with more
standard ones, so by now most of the symbols mentioned in this
document haven't been around for quite a long time already.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
This organizes the existing contents into sections, tweaks some parts
a bit and adds links to the pages where the contents that were ripped
out of hacking.rst now live, either inline or in the catch-all "further
reading" section depending on what makes more sense.
The result is that it's now possible to consume this page, which is
the entry point for new contributors, in just a few minutes, and then
drill down further based on factors such as the familiarity with the
open source development model or mail-based workflows.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
These guidelines should already be familiar to people who have
contributed to other open source projects, so it doesn't make much
sense for them to be so prominent. Move them to a separate page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
This is a relatively lengthy part with lots of details, which many
people who are familiar with a mail-based development workflow will
already know and which will become obsolete once we move to GitLab.
Move the contents to a separate page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
This part contains a lot of useful tips, but presenting all of them
at the same time obfuscated the central message which is, 'make check'
and 'make syntax-check' must pass after each patch in a series. Let's
move them to a separate page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
While it's good to have these rules written down for reference, they
apply exclusively to committers, who by definition are familiar with
the project and probably work on it daily, so there's no need to have
them front and center when a separate page will do.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
This part describes entirely optional tooling, so it makes sense not
to have it advertised too prominently. Move it to a separate page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
Most new contributors are probably going to modify existing code rather
than introducing all-new programs and scripts, and even when the latter
happen they'll hopefully get a feel for which programming languages are
considered acceptable for the project by looking at what's already in
the repo. Make this part less prominent by moving it to a separate page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
This part represents the biggest chunk of the existing hacking.rst, and
despite that its utility is very limited because 'make syntax-check'
already guarantees most of the rules are followed over time.
Until the glorious day we finally codify our coding style completely
into a configuration for a tool such as clang-format and thus no longer
need a plain English description of it, move this part to a separate
page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
This part is very specific and doesn't quite fit into the "coding
style" section, so let's move it to its own page.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
The conversion has been performed by using pandoc as a first pass,
and then tweaking the result manually until it looked satisfactory.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
