docs/CONTRIBUTING.md

Welcome to GitHub docs contributing guide

Thank you for investing your time in contributing to our project! Any contribution you make will be reflected on docs.github.com ✨.

Read our Code of Conduct to keep our community approachable and respectable.

In this guide you will get an overview of the contribution workflow from opening an issue, creating a PR, reviewing, and merging the PR.

Use the table of contents icon on the top left corner of this document to get to a specific section of this guide quickly.

New contributor guide

To get an overview of the project, read the README. Here are some resources to help you get started with open source contributions:

• Finding ways to contribute to open source on GitHub
• Set up Git
• GitHub flow
• Collaborating with pull requests

Getting started

To navigate our codebase with confidence, see the introduction to working in the docs repository 🎊. For more information on how we write our markdown files, see the GitHub Markdown reference.

Check to see what types of contributions we accept before making changes. Some of them don't even require writing a single line of code ✨.

Issues

Create a new issue

If you spot a problem with the docs, search if an issue already exists. If a related issue doesn't exist, you can open a new issue using a relevant issue form.

Solve an issue

Scan through our existing issues to find one that interests you. You can narrow down the search using labels as filters. See Labels for more information. As a general rule, we don’t assign issues to anyone. If you find an issue to work on, you are welcome to open a PR with a fix.

Make Changes

Make changes in the UI

Click Make a contribution at the bottom of any docs page to make small changes such as a typo, sentence fix, or a broken link. This takes you to the .md file where you can make your changes and create a pull request for a review.

Make changes in a codespace

For more information about using a codespace for working on GitHub documentation, see "Working in a codespace."

Make changes locally

1. Fork the repository.

• Using GitHub Desktop:

  • Getting started with GitHub Desktop will guide you through setting up Desktop.
  • Once Desktop is set up, you can use it to fork the repo!

• Using the command line:

  • Fork the repo so that you can make your changes without affecting the original project until you're ready to merge them.

2. Install or update to Node.js v16. For more information, see the development guide.

3. Create a working branch and start with your changes!

Commit your update

Commit the changes once you are happy with them. Don't forget to self-review to speed up the review process⚡.

Pull Request

When you're finished with the changes, create a pull request, also known as a PR.

• Fill the "Ready for review" template so that we can review your PR. This template helps reviewers understand your changes as well as the purpose of your pull request.
• Don't forget to link PR to issue if you are solving one.
• Enable the checkbox to allow maintainer edits so the branch can be updated for a merge. Once you submit your PR, a Docs team member will review your proposal. We may ask questions or request additional information.
• We may ask for changes to be made before a PR can be merged, either using suggested changes or pull request comments. You can apply suggested changes directly through the UI. You can make any other changes in your fork, then commit them to your branch.
• As you update your PR and apply changes, mark each conversation as resolved.
• If you run into any merge issues, checkout this git tutorial to help you resolve merge conflicts and other issues.

Your PR is merged!

Congratulations 🎉🎉 The GitHub team thanks you ✨.

Once your PR is merged, your contributions will be publicly visible on the GitHub docs.

Now that you are part of the GitHub docs community, see how else you can contribute to the docs.

Windows

This site can be developed on Windows, however a few potential gotchas need to be kept in mind:

1. Regular Expressions: Windows uses \r\n for line endings, while Unix-based systems use \n. Therefore, when working on Regular Expressions, use \r?\n instead of \n in order to support both environments. The Node.js os.EOL property can be used to get an OS-specific end-of-line marker.
2. Paths: Windows systems use \ for the path separator, which would be returned by path.join and others. You could use path.posix, path.posix.join etc and the slash module, if you need forward slashes - like for constructing URLs - or ensure your code works with either.
3. Bash: Not every Windows developer has a terminal that fully supports Bash, so it's generally preferred to write scripts in JavaScript instead of Bash.
4. Filename too long error: There is a 260 character limit for a filename when Git is compiled with msys. While the suggestions below are not guaranteed to work and could cause other issues, a few workarounds include:
   • Update Git configuration: git config --system core.longpaths true
   • Consider using a different Git client on Windows