Contributing
Warewulf is an open source project, meaning we have the challenge of limited resources. We are grateful for any support that you can offer. Helping other users, raising issues, helping write documentation, or contributing code are all ways to help!
Join the community
This is a huge endeavor, and your help would be greatly appreciated! Post to online communities about Warewulf, and request that your distribution vendor, service provider, and system administrators include Warewulf for you!
Warewulf on Slack
Many members of the Warewulf community, including developers, communicate via Slack. It’s a great place to get help with an issue or talk about how you’re using Warewulf.
Raise an Issue
For general bugs/issues, you can open an issue at the GitHub repo.
Contribute to the code
We use the traditional GitHub Flow to develop. This means that you fork the main repo, create a new branch to make changes, and submit a pull request (PR) to the master branch.
Check out our official CONTRIBUTING.md document, which also includes a code of conduct.
Step 1. Fork the repo
To contribute to Warewulf, you should obtain a GitHub account and fork
the Warewulf repository. Once
forked, clone your fork of the repo to your computer. (Obviously, you
should replace your-username with your GitHub username.)
git clone https://github.com/your-username/warewulf.git
cd warewulf
Step 2. Checkout a new branch
Branches are a way
of isolating your features from the main branch. Given that we’ve just
cloned the repo, we will probably want to make a new branch from
master in which to work on our new feature. Lets call that branch
new-feature:
git checkout master
git checkout -b new-feature
Note
You can always check which branch you are in by running git
branch.
Step 3. Make your changes
On your new branch, go nuts! Make changes, test them, and when you are happy commit the changes to the branch:
git add file-changed1 file-changed2...
git commit -m "what changed?"
This commit message is important - it should describe exactly the changes that you have made. Good commit messages read like so:
git commit -m "changed function getConfig in functions.go to output csv to fix #2"
git commit -m "updated docs about shell to close #10"
The tags close #10 and fix #2 are referencing issues that are
posted on the upstream repo where you will direct your pull
request. When your PR is merged into the master branch, these messages
will automatically close the issues, and further, they will link your
commits directly to the issues they intend to fix. This will help
future maintainers understand your contribution, or (hopefully not)
revert the code back to a previous version if necessary.
Step 4. Push your branch to your fork
When you are done with your commits, you should push your branch to your fork (and you can also continuously push commits here as you work):
git push origin new-feature
Note that you should always check the status of your branches to see what has been pushed (or not):
git status
Step 5. Submit a Pull Request
Once you have pushed your branch, then you can go to your fork (in the
web GUI on GitHub) and submit a Pull Request. Regardless
of the name of your branch, your PR should be submitted to the
main branch. Submitting your PR will open a conversation thread
for the maintainers of Warewulf to discuss your contribution. At this
time, the continuous integration that is linked with the code base
will also be executed. If there is an issue, or if the maintainers
suggest changes, you can continue to push commits to your branch and
they will update the Pull Request.
Step 6. Keep your branch in sync
Cloning the repo will create an exact copy of the Warewulf repository at that moment. As you work, your branch may become out of date as others merge changesinto the upstream master. In the event that you need to update a branch, you will need to follow the next steps:
# add a new remote named "upstream"
git remote add upstream https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf.git
# or another branch to be updated
git checkout master
git pull upstream master
# to update your fork
git push origin master
git checkout new-feature
git merge master