How To Contribute To A Project On Github

Nov 11th, 2011

🦖 This post was published in 2011 and is most likely outdated.

This is a step-by-step tutorial going through how to easily submit a patch to a github project.

I assume you have already an account on github. Let’s say you want to contribute to Wordpress on Dotcloud.

1. Make your own working copy of the project by forking it: go on the project page (http://github.com/qpleple/wordpress-on-dotcloud) and click “Fork”. You can access you copy at: http://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/wordpress-on-dotcloud

2. Clone your fork git repository on your local computer:

    git clone git@github.com:YOUR_USERNAME/wordpress-on-dotcloud.git
   

3. Create a new branch for your patch:

    git branch my-awesome-patch
   

   This is very important, create one branch per patch. And never submit a patch that has been done on the branch master!

4. Do your trick, make your patch, change the code, fix a bug, have a coffee, add a cool feature, etc.

5. When you are done, commit your changes:

    git add -u
    git commit -m "fixing this broken feature"
   

   Try to keep commit message short, less than 100 characters.

6. Push your new branch to github:

    git push origin my-awesome-patch
   

7. Go on your fork page (http://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/wordpress-on-dotcloud), then select my-awesome-patch in the branch list and click “Pull Request”.

8. Check the diff, write a message explaining what you have done and why the repository owner should accept your pull request and submit.

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