Contributing Guidelines

for Repositories Driven by GitHub Actions

First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! â¤ï¸

Contributions are essential to keep our projects alive. I would like to keep it as easy as possible to contribute changes. There are a few guidelines that I need contributors to follow so that all of us can benefit from quality control and quality documentation. All types of contributions are encouraged and valued. Please make sure to read the relevant section before making your contribution. It will make it a lot easier for us maintainers and smooth out the experience for all involved. The community looks forward to your contributions. ð

And if you like the project, but just donât have time to contribute, thatâs fine. There are other easy ways to support the project and show your appreciation, which we would also be very happy about:

Star the project
Tweet about it
Refer this project in your projectâs readme
Mention the project at local meetups and tell your friends/colleagues

Typical Contribution Workflow

[<img alt="sequence" width="100%" align="right" src="https://crgz.github.io/abbreviated_dates/uml/png/sequence.png"/>](https://crgz.github.io/abbreviated_dates/uml/svg/sequence.svg)

Create a Pull Request

As usual:

Create your new feature branch
Push it to GitHub
Create your Pull Request Please ensure that the Pull Request has:

A good description
Unit Tests covering the new source code
The source code conform to Coding guidelines for Prolog

Wait for the Test to Finish

The Test GitHub Action Workflow will be triggered once the Pull Request is Created and after each new commit is pushed to the Pull Request. We might request for additional changes to ensure it pass our quality checks and send it back to you with further comments if the tests fail or if the Pull Request does not meet the validation criteria.

Optionally label the Pull Request as release ready

If the Pull Request is implementing a feature intended to be used by our final users it should be labeled with the release label. If the Pull Request is implementing improvements to the operational aspects of our work it can be merged without delivering a new release. This is to ensure that we only release new packages implementing end user features into the Library Supply Chain Infrastructure.

Review

For Valid Pull Request, the reviewer (person familiar with the code/functionality) checks if the Pull Request looks good or needs additional changes.
If all looks good, the reviewer would approve the Pull Request.
If a change is needed, the contributor is requested to make a suggested change.
You make the change and submit for the review again.
This cycle repeats itself till the Pull Request gets approved.
We might request you to make further changes to your Pull Request for the tests to pass.
All the code will be merged in the code base as soon as the review is approved.

Fetch the latest changes

Please feel free to use your favorite environment. For command line users there is a GNU Make shortcut recipe to switch back to the main branch, fetch changes and delete previously merged branches:

make reset

Delivery

A set of GitHub Action Workflows intended to deliver the new release will be triggered if it has the release label as soon as the Pull Request is closed.

General guidelines and philosophy for contribution

Please include unit tests when you contribute new features, as they help to prove that your code works correctly, and guard against future breaking changes to lower the maintenance cost.
Bug fixes also generally require unit tests, because the presence of bugs usually indicates insufficient test coverage.
Tests should follow the testing best practices guide.

Coding style

Changes to the project Prolog code should conform to Coding guidelines for Prolog

Running unit tests

There are two ways to run unit tests.

Using tools and libraries installed directly on your system with:

The system should install the required packages to enable this
operation

Using GitHub Actions test Workflow. This happens automatically as part of the test GitHub Action Workflow.

I Have a Question

If you want to ask a question, we assume that you have read the available Documentation.

Before you ask a question, it is best to search for existing Issues that might help you. In case you have found a suitable issue and still need clarification, you can write your question in this issue. It is also advisable to search the internet for answers first.

If you then still feel the need to ask a question and need clarification, we recommend the following:

Open an Issue.
Provide as much context as you can about what youâre running into.
Provide project and platform versions, depending on what seems relevant.
We will then take care of the issue as soon as possible.

Reporting Bugs

Before Submitting a Bug Report

A good bug report should not leave others needing to chase you up for more information. Therefore, we ask you to investigate carefully, collect information and describe the issue in detail in your report. Please complete the following steps in advance to help us fix any potential bug as fast as possible.

Make sure that you are using the latest version.
Determine if your bug is really a bug and not an error on your side e.g. using incompatible environment components/versions (Make sure that you have read the documentation. If you are looking for support, you might want to check the previous section).
To see if other users have experienced (and potentially already solved) the same issue you are having, check if there is not already a bug report existing for your bug or error in the bug tracker.
Also make sure to search the internet (including Stack Overflow) to see if users outside the GitHub community have discussed the issue.
Collect information about the bug:
- Stack trace
- OS, Platform and Version
- Version of the SWI-Prolog interpreter.
- Possibly your input and the output
- Can you reliably reproduce the issue? And can you also reproduce it with older versions?

How Do I Submit a Good Bug Report?

You must never report security related issues, vulnerabilities or bugs including sensitive information to the issue tracker, or elsewhere in public. Instead, sensitive bugs must be sent by email to the project coordinators

We use GitHub issues to track bugs and errors. If you run into an issue with the project:

Open an Issue. (Since we canât be sure at this point whether it is a bug or not, we ask you not to talk about a bug yet and not to label the issue.)
Explain the behavior you would expect and the actual behavior.
Please provide as much context as possible and describe the reproduction steps that someone else can follow to recreate the issue on their own. This usually includes your code. For good bug reports you should isolate the problem and create a reduced test case.
Provide the information you collected in the previous section. Once itâs filed:
The project team will label the issue accordingly.
A team member will try to reproduce the issue with your provided steps. If there are no reproduction steps or no obvious way to reproduce the issue, the team will ask you for those steps and mark the issue as needs-details. Bugs with the needs-details tag will not be addressed until they are reproduced.
If the team is able to reproduce the issue, it will be marked needs-fix, as well as possibly other tags (such as critical), and the issue will be left to be implemented by someone.

Suggesting Enhancements

This section guides you through submitting an enhancement suggestion for Abbreviated Date Parser, including completely new features and minor improvements to existing functionality. Following these guidelines will help maintainers and the community to understand your suggestion and find related suggestions.

Before Submitting an Enhancement

Make sure that you are using the latest version.
Read the documentation carefully and find out if the functionality is already covered, maybe by an individual configuration.
Perform a search to see if the enhancement has already been suggested. If it has, add a comment to the existing issue instead of opening a new one.
Find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. Itâs up to you to make a strong case to convince the projectâs developers of the merits of this feature. Keep in mind that we want features that will be useful to the majority of our users and not just a small subset. If youâre just targeting a minority of users, consider writing an add-on/plugin library.

How Do I Submit a Good Enhancement Suggestion?

Enhancement suggestions are tracked as GitHub issues.

Use a clear and descriptive title for the issue to identify the suggestion.
Provide a step-by-step description of the suggested enhancement in as many details as possible.
Describe the current behavior and explain which behavior you expected to see instead and why. At this point you can also tell which alternatives do not work for you.
You may want to include screenshots and animated GIFs which help you demonstrate the steps or point out the part which the suggestion is related to. You can use this tool to record GIFs on macOS and Windows, and this tool on Linux.
Explain why this enhancement would be useful to most Abbreviated Date Parser users. You may also want to point out the other projects that solved it better and which could serve as inspiration.

Join The Project

Team We are happy to have you in our team as soon as we know you want to be part of it. You will receive an email inviting you to the organization. You will need to accept the invitation before becoming a member of our team.