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CONTRIBUTING.md

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After you've reviewed these contribution guidelines, you'll be all set to contribute to this project.
CONTRIBUTING.md 25.17 KiB

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

Contribute to GitLab

Thank you for your interest in contributing to GitLab. This guide details how to contribute to GitLab in a way that is efficient for everyone.

GitLab comes into two flavors, GitLab Community Edition (CE) our free and open source edition, and GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) which is our commercial edition. Throughout this guide you will see references to CE and EE for abbreviation.

If you have read this guide and want to know how the GitLab core team operates please see the GitLab contributing process.

Contributor license agreement

By submitting code as an individual you agree to the individual contributor license agreement. By submitting code as an entity you agree to the corporate contributor license agreement.

Security vulnerability disclosure

Please report suspected security vulnerabilities in private to support@gitlab.com, also see the disclosure section on the GitLab.com website. Please do NOT create publicly viewable issues for suspected security vulnerabilities.

Closing policy for issues and merge requests

GitLab is a popular open source project and the capacity to deal with issues and merge requests is limited. Out of respect for our volunteers, issues and merge requests not in line with the guidelines listed in this document may be closed without notice.

Please treat our volunteers with courtesy and respect, it will go a long way towards getting your issue resolved.

Issues and merge requests should be in English and contain appropriate language for audiences of all ages.

Helping others

Please help other GitLab users when you can. The channels people will reach out on can be found on the getting help page.

Sign up for the mailing list, answer GitLab questions on StackOverflow or respond in the IRC channel. You can also sign up on CodeTriage to help with the remaining issues on the GitHub issue tracker.

I want to contribute!

If you want to contribute to GitLab, but are not sure where to start, look for issues with the label up-for-grabs. These issues will be of reasonable size and challenge, for anyone to start contributing to GitLab.

This was inspired by an article by Kent C. Dodds.

Implement design & UI elements

Design reference

The GitLab design reference can be found in the gitlab-design project. The designs are made using Antetype (.atype files). You can use the free Antetype viewer (Mac OSX only) or grab an exported PNG from the design (the PNG is 1:1).

The current designs can be found in the gitlab8.atype file.

UI development kit

Implemented UI elements can also be found at https://gitlab.com/help/ui. Please note that this page isn't comprehensive at this time.

Issue tracker

To get support for your particular problem please use the getting help channels.

The GitLab CE issue tracker on GitLab.com is for bugs concerning the latest GitLab release and feature proposals.

When submitting an issue please conform to the issue submission guidelines listed below. Not all issues will be addressed and your issue is more likely to be addressed if you submit a merge request which partially or fully solves the issue.

If you're unsure where to post, post to the mailing list or Stack Overflow first. There are a lot of helpful GitLab users there who may be able to help you quickly. If your particular issue turns out to be a bug, it will find its way from there.

If it happens that you know the solution to an existing bug, please first open the issue in order to keep track of it and then open the relevant merge request that potentially fixes it.

Feature proposals

To create a feature proposal for CE, open an issue on the issue tracker of CE.

For feature proposals for EE, open an issue on the issue tracker of EE.

In order to help track the feature proposals, we have created a feature proposal label. For the time being, users that are not members of the project cannot add labels. You can instead ask one of the core team members to add the label feature proposal to the issue or add the following code snippet right after your description in a new line: ~"feature proposal".

Please keep feature proposals as small and simple as possible, complex ones might be edited to make them small and simple.

Please submit Feature Proposals using the 'Feature Proposal' issue template provided on the issue tracker.

For changes in the interface, it can be helpful to create a mockup first. If you want to create something yourself, consider opening an issue first to discuss whether it is interesting to include this in GitLab.

Issue tracker guidelines

Search the issue tracker for similar entries before submitting your own, there's a good chance somebody else had the same issue or feature proposal. Show your support with an award emoji and/or join the discussion.

Please submit bugs using the 'Bug' issue template provided on the issue tracker. The text in the parenthesis is there to help you with what to include. Omit it when submitting the actual issue. You can copy-paste it and then edit as you see fit.

Issue weight

Issue weight allows us to get an idea of the amount of work required to solve one or multiple issues. This makes it possible to schedule work more accurately.

You are encouraged to set the weight of any issue. Following the guidelines below will make it easy to manage this, without unnecessary overhead.

  1. Set weight for any issue at the earliest possible convenience
  2. If you don't agree with a set weight, discuss with other developers until consensus is reached about the weight
  3. Issue weights are an abstract measurement of complexity of the issue. Do not relate issue weight directly to time. This is called anchoring and something you want to avoid.
  4. Something that has a weight of 1 (or no weight) is really small and simple. Something that is 9 is rewriting a large fundamental part of GitLab, which might lead to many hard problems to solve. Changing some text in GitLab is probably 1, adding a new Git Hook maybe 4 or 5, big features 7-9.
  5. If something is very large, it should probably be split up in multiple issues or chunks. You can simply not set the weight of a parent issue and set weights to children issues.

Regression issues

Every monthly release has a corresponding issue on the CE issue tracker to keep track of functionality broken by that release and any fixes that need to be included in a patch release (see 8.3 Regressions as an example).

As outlined in the issue description, the intended workflow is to post one note with a reference to an issue describing the regression, and then to update that note with a reference to the merge request that fixes it as it becomes available.

If you're a contributor who doesn't have the required permissions to update other users' notes, please post a new note with a reference to both the issue and the merge request.

The release manager will update the notes in the regression issue as fixes are addressed.

Technical debt

In order to track things that can be improved in GitLab's codebase, we created the ~"technical debt" label in GitLab's issue tracker.

This label should be added to issues that describe things that can be improved, shortcuts that have been taken, code that needs refactoring, features that need additional attention, and all other things that have been left behind due to high velocity of development.

Everyone can create an issue, though you may need to ask for adding a specific label, if you do not have permissions to do it by yourself. Additional labels can be combined with the technical debt label, to make it easier to schedule the improvements for a release.

Issues tagged with the technical debt label have the same priority like issues that describe a new feature to be introduced in GitLab, and should be scheduled for a release by the appropriate person.

Make sure to mention the merge request that the technical debt issue is associated with in the description of the issue.

Merge requests

We welcome merge requests with fixes and improvements to GitLab code, tests, and/or documentation. The features we would really like a merge request for are listed with the label Accepting Merge Requests on our issue tracker for CE and EE but other improvements are also welcome.