node/CONTRIBUTING.md

CONTRIBUTING

ISSUE CONTRIBUTIONS

When opening new issues or commenting on existing issues on this repository please make sure discussions are related to concrete technical issues with the iojs software.

Discussion of non-technical topics including subjects like intellectual property, trademark and high level project questions should move to the node-forward discussion repository instead.

CODE CONTRIBUTIONS

The node.js project welcomes new contributors. This document will guide you through the process.

FORK

Fork the project on GitHub and check out your copy.

$ git clone git@github.com:username/io.js.git
$ cd io.js
$ git remote add upstream git://github.com/iojs/io.js.git

Now decide if you want your feature or bug fix to go into the master branch or the stable branch. As a rule of thumb, bug fixes go into the stable branch while new features go into the master branch.

The stable branch is effectively frozen; patches that change the node.js API/ABI or affect the run-time behavior of applications get rejected.

The rules for the master branch are less strict; consult the stability index page for details.

In a nutshell, modules are at varying levels of API stability. Bug fixes are always welcome but API or behavioral changes to modules at stability level 3 and up are off-limits.

Node.js has several bundled dependencies in the deps/ and the tools/ directories that are not part of the project proper. Any changes to files in those directories or its subdirectories should be sent to their respective projects. Do not send your patch to us, we cannot accept it.

In case of doubt, open an issue in the issue tracker, post your question to the node.js mailing list or contact one of the project maintainers on IRC.

Especially do so if you plan to work on something big. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing your hard work go to waste because your vision does not align with that of a project maintainer.

BRANCH

Okay, so you have decided on the proper branch. Create a feature branch and start hacking:

$ git checkout -b my-feature-branch -t origin/v0.12

(Where v0.12 is the latest stable branch as of this writing.)

COMMIT

Make sure git knows your name and email address:

$ git config --global user.name "J. Random User"
$ git config --global user.email "j.random.user@example.com"

Writing good commit logs is important. A commit log should describe what changed and why. Follow these guidelines when writing one:

1. The first line should be 50 characters or less and contain a short description of the change prefixed with the name of the changed subsystem (e.g. "net: add localAddress and localPort to Socket").
2. Keep the second line blank.
3. Wrap all other lines at 72 columns.

A good commit log looks like this:

subsystem: explaining the commit in one line

Body of commit message is a few lines of text, explaining things
in more detail, possibly giving some background about the issue
being fixed, etc etc.

The body of the commit message can be several paragraphs, and
please do proper word-wrap and keep columns shorter than about
72 characters or so. That way `git log` will show things
nicely even when it is indented.

The header line should be meaningful; it is what other people see when they run git shortlog or git log --oneline.

Check the output of git log --oneline files_that_you_changed to find out what subsystem (or subsystems) your changes touch.

REBASE

Use git rebase (not git merge) to sync your work from time to time.

$ git fetch upstream
$ git rebase upstream/v0.12  # or upstream/master

TEST

Bug fixes and features should come with tests. Add your tests in the test/simple/ directory. Look at other tests to see how they should be structured (license boilerplate, common includes, etc.).

$ make jslint test

Make sure the linter is happy and that all tests pass. Please, do not submit patches that fail either check.

If you are updating tests and just want to run a single test to check it, you can use this syntax to run it exactly as the test harness would:

python tools/test.py -v --mode=release simple/test-stream2-transform

You can run tests directly with node:

node ./test/simple/test-streams2-transform.js

PUSH

$ git push origin my-feature-branch

Go to https://github.com/username/io.js and select your feature branch. Click the 'Pull Request' button and fill out the form.

Pull requests are usually reviewed within a few days. If there are comments to address, apply your changes in a separate commit and push that to your feature branch. Post a comment in the pull request afterwards; GitHub does not send out notifications when you add commits.

Contribution Policy

Individuals making significant and valuable contributions are given commit-access to the project. These individuals are identified by the Technical Committee (TC) and discussed during the weekly TC meeting.

If you make a significant contribution and are not considered for commit-access log an issue and it will be brought up in the next TC meeting.

Internal pull-requests to solicit feedback are required for any other non-trivial contribution but left to the discretion of the contributor.

Pull requests may be approved by any committer with sufficient expertise to take full responsibility for the change, according to the "Landing Patches" protocol described below.

Landing Patches

• All bugfixes require a test case which demonstrates the defect. The test should fail before the change, and pass after the change.
• Trivial changes (ie, those which fix bugs or improve performance without affecting API or causing other wide-reaching impact) may be landed immediately after review by a committer who did not write the code, provided that no other committers object to the change.
• If you are unsure, or if you are the author, have someone else review the change.
• For significant changes wait a full 48 hours (72 hours if it spans a weekend) before merging so that active contributors who are distributed throughout the world have a chance to weigh in.
• Controversial changes and very significant changes should not be merged until they have been discussed by the TC which will make any final decisions.
• Always include the Reviewed-by: Your Name <your-email> in the commit message.
• In commit messages also include Fixes: that either includes the full url (e.g. https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/...), and/or the hash and commit message if the commit fixes a bug in a previous commit.
• PR's should include their full PR-URL: so it's easy to trace a commit back to the conversation that lead up to that change.
• Double check PR's to make sure the person's full name and email address are correct before merging.
• Except when updating dependencies, all commits should be self contained. Meaning, every commit should pass all tests. This makes it much easier when bisecting to find a breaking change.

Direct instruction

(Optional) Ensure that you are not in a borked am/rebase state

git am --abort
git rebase --abort

Checkout proper target branch

git checkout v0.12

Update the tree

git fetch origin
git merge --ff-only origin/v0.12

Apply external patches

curl https://github.com/iojs/io.js/pull/xxx.patch | git am --whitespace=fix

Check and re-review the changes

git diff origin/v0.12

Check number of commits and commit messages

git log origin/v0.12...v0.12

If there are multiple commits that relate to the same feature or one with a feature and separate with a test for that feature - you'll need to squash them (or strictly speaking fixup).

git rebase -i origin/v0.12

This will open a screen like this (in the default shell editor):

pick 6928fc1 crypto: add feature A
pick 8120c4c add test for feature A
pick 51759dc feature B
pick 7d6f433 test for feature B

# Rebase f9456a2..7d6f433 onto f9456a2
#
# Commands:
#  p, pick = use commit
#  r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
#  e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
#  s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
#  f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
#  x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell
#
# These lines can be re-ordered; they are executed from top to bottom.
#
# If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST.
#
# However, if you remove everything, the rebase will be aborted.
#
# Note that empty commits are commented out

Replace a couple of picks with fixup to squash them into a previous commit:

pick 6928fc1 crypto: add feature A
fixup 8120c4c add test for feature A
pick 51759dc feature B
fixup 7d6f433 test for feature B

Replace pick with reword to change the commit message:

reword 6928fc1 crypto: add feature A
fixup 8120c4c add test for feature A
reword 51759dc feature B
fixup 7d6f433 test for feature B

Save the file and close the editor, you'll be asked to enter new commit message for that commit, and everything else should go smoothly. Note that this is a good moment to fix incorrect commit logs, ensure that they are properly formatted, and add Reviewed-By line.

Time to push it:

git push origin v0.12

Governance

This repository is jointly governed by a technical committee, commonly referred to as the "TC."

The TC has final authority over this project including:

• Technical direction
• Project governance and process (including this policy)
• Contribution policy
• GitHub repository hosting
• Conduct guidelines

Membership

Initial membership invitations to the TC were given to individuals who had been active contributors to io.js, and who have significant experience with the management of the io.js project. Membership is expected to evolve over time according to the needs of the project.

Current membership is:

Ben Noordhuis (@bnoordhuis)
Bert Belder (@piscisaureus)
Fedor Indutny (@indutny)
Isaac Z. Schlueter (@isaacs)
Nathan Rajlich (@TooTallNate)
TJ Fontaine (@tjfontaine)
Trevor Norris (@trevnorris)

TC seats are not time-limited. There is no fixed size of the TC. However, the expected target is between 6 and 12, to ensure adequate coverage of important areas of expertise, balanced with the ability to make decisions efficiently.

There is no specific set of requirements or qualifications for TC membership beyond these rules.

The TC may add contributors to the TC by unanimous consensus.

A TC member may be removed from the TC by voluntary resignation, or by unanimous consensus of all other TC members.

Changes to TC membership should be posted in the agenda, and may be suggested as any other agenda item (see "TC Meetings" below).

If an addition or removal is proposed during a meeting, and the full TC is not in attendance to participate, then the addition or removal is added to the agenda for the subsequent meeting. This is to ensure that all members are given the opportunity to participate in all membership decisions. If a TC member is unable to attend a meeting where a planned membership decision is being made, then their consent is assumed.

No more than 1/3 of the TC members may be affiliated with the same employer. If removal or resignation of a TC member, or a change of employment by a TC member, creates a situation where more than 1/3 of the TC membership shares an employer, then the situation must be immediately remedied by the resignation or removal of one or more TC members affiliated with the over-represented employer(s).

TC Meetings

The TC meets weekly on a Google hangout. The meeting is run by a designated moderator, currently Mikeal Rogers (@mikeal). Each meeting should be published to Youtube.

Items are added to the TC agenda which are considered contentious or are modifications of governance, contribution policy, TC membership, or release process. The intention of the agenda is not to approve or review all patches, that should happen continuously on GitHub (see "Contribution Policy").

Any community member or contributor can ask that something be added to the next meeting's agenda by logging a GitHub Issue. Any TC member or the moderator can add the item to the agenda by a simple +1. The moderator and the TC cannot veto or remove items.

Prior to each TC meeting the moderator will email the Agenda to the TC. TC members can add any items they like to the agenda at the beginning of each meeting. The moderator and the TC cannot veto or remove items.

TC may invite persons or representatives from certain projects to participate in a non-voting capacity. These invitees currently are:

• A representative from build chosen by that project.

The moderator is responsible for summarizing the discussion of each agenda item and send it as a pull request after the meeting.

Consensus Seeking Process

The TC follows a Consensus Seeking decision making model.

When an agenda item has appeared to reach a consensus the moderator will ask "Does anyone object?" as a final call for dissent from the consensus.

If an agenda item cannot reach a consensus a TC member can call for either a closing vote or a vote to table the issue to the next meeting. The call for a vote must be seconded by a majority of the TC or else the discussion will continue. Simple majority wins.

Note that changes to TC membership require unanimous consensus. See "Membership" above.

Caine's requirements

Hello!

I am pleased to see your valuable contribution to this project. Would you please mind answering a couple of questions to help me classify this submission and/or gather required information for the core team members?

Questions:

• Issue-only Does this issue happen in core, or in some user-space module from npm or other source? Please ensure that the test case that reproduces this problem is not using any external dependencies. If the error is not reproducible with just core modules - it is most likely not a io.js problem. Expected: yes
• Which part of core do you think it might be related to? One of: debugger, http, assert, buffer, child_process, cluster, crypto, dgram, dns, domain, events, fs, http, https, module, net, os, path, querystring, readline, repl, smalloc, stream, timers, tls, url, util, vm, zlib, c++, docs, other (label)
• Which versions of io.js do you think are affected by this? One of: v0.10, v0.12, v1.0.0 (label)
• PR-only Does make test pass after applying this Pull Request. Expected: yes
• PR-only Is the commit message properly formatted? (See CONTRIBUTING.md for more information) Expected: yes

Please provide the answers in an ordered list like this:

1. Answer for the first question
2. Answer for the second question
3. ...

Note that I am just a bot with a limited human-reply parsing abilities, so please be very careful with numbers and don't skip the questions!

In case of success I will say: ...summoning the core team devs!.

In case of validation problem I will say: Sorry, but something is not right here:.

Truly yours, Caine.

Responsibilities

• indutny: crypto, tls, https, child_process, c++
• trevnorris: buffer, http, https, smalloc
• bnoordhuis: http, cluster, child_process, dgram