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libvirt/docs/hacking.rst
Andrea Bolognani a50a83b340 docs: Add submitting-patches.rst 
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>
2020-04-08 09:32:42 +02:00

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Contributor guidelines

General tips for contributing patches

  1. Discuss any large changes on the mailing list first. Post patches early and listen to feedback.

  2. Official upstream repository is kept in git (https://libvirt.org/git/libvirt.git) and is browsable along with other libvirt-related repositories (e.g. libvirt-python) online.

  3. Patches to translations are maintained via the zanata project. If you want to fix a translation in a .po file, join the appropriate language team. The libvirt release process automatically pulls the latest version of each translation file from zanata.

  4. In your commit message, make the summary line reasonably short (60 characters is typical), followed by a blank line, followed by any longer description of why your patch makes sense. If the patch fixes a regression, and you know what commit introduced the problem, mentioning that is useful. If the patch resolves a bugzilla report, mentioning the URL of the bug number is useful; but also summarize the issue rather than making all readers follow the link. You can use 'git shortlog -30' to get an idea of typical summary lines.

  5. Contributors to libvirt projects must assert that they are in compliance with the Developer Certificate of Origin 1.1. This is achieved by adding a "Signed-off-by" line containing the contributor's name and e-mail to every commit message. The presence of this line attests that the contributor has read the above lined DCO and agrees with its statements.

  6. Split large changes into a series of smaller patches, self-contained if possible, with an explanation of each patch and an explanation of how the sequence of patches fits together. Moreover, please keep in mind that it's required to be able to compile cleanly (including make check and make syntax-check) after each patch. A feature does not have to work until the end of a series, but intermediate patches must compile and not cause test-suite failures (this is to preserve the usefulness of git bisect, among other things).

  7. Make sure your patches apply against libvirt GIT. Developers only follow GIT and don't care much about released versions.

  8. Run the automated tests on your code before submitting any changes. That is:

    make check
make syntax-check

  9. Update tests and/or documentation, particularly if you are adding a new feature or changing the output of a program.

  10. Don't forget to update the release notes by changing docs/news.xml if your changes are significant. All user-visible changes, such as adding new XML elements or fixing all but the most obscure bugs, must be (briefly) described in a release notes entry; changes that are only relevant to other libvirt developers, such as code refactoring, don't belong in the release notes. Note that docs/news.xml should be updated in its own commit not to get in the way of backports.

There is more on this subject, including lots of links to background reading on the subject, on Richard Jones' guide to working with open source projects.