Below is a modified version of Opscode's CONTRIBUTING.md in their public cookbooks. Thanks to them for the great documentation!
- Use the testing methods and tools outlined below
- Use Github issues and pull requests when possible
I regularly review contributions and will get back to you if I have any suggestions or concerns.
Licensing is very important to open source projects, it helps ensure the software continues to be available under the terms that the author desired. Chef uses the Apache 2.0 license to strike a balance between open contribution and allowing you to use the software however you would like to.
The license tells you what rights you have that are provided by the copyright holder. It is important that the contributor fully understands what rights they are licensing and agrees to them. Sometimes the copyright holder isn't the contributor, most often when the contributor is doing work for a company.
You can get a quick copy of the repository for this cookbook by
running git clone git://github.com/bflad/chef-COOKBOOKNAME.git.
For collaboration purposes, it is best if you create a Github account and fork the repository to your own account. Once you do this you will be able to push your changes to your Github repository for others to see and use.
If you have another repository in your GitHub account named the same as the cookbook, we suggest you suffix the repository with -cookbook.
You should submit your patch as a git branch named after the ticket, such as GH-1337. This is called a topic branch and allows users to associate a branch of code with the ticket.
It is a best practice to have your commit message have a summary line that includes the ticket number, followed by an empty line and then a brief description of the commit. This also helps other contributors understand the purpose of changes to the code.
[GH-1757] - platform_family and style
* use platform_family for platform checking
* update notifies syntax to "resource_type[resource_name]" instead of
resources() lookup
* GH-692 - delete config files dropped off by packages in conf.d
* dropped debian 4 support because all other platforms have the same
values, and it is older than "old stable" debian release
Remember that not all users use Chef in the same way or on the same operating systems as you, so it is helpful to be clear about your use case and change so they can understand it even when it doesn't apply to them.
All of my open source cookbook projects are available on Github.
I don't require you to use Github, and I will even take patch diffs attached to issues. However Github has a lot of convenient features, such as being able to see a diff of changes between a pull request and the main repository quickly without downloading the branch.
Additional help with git is available on the Working with Git wiki page.
This cookbook is set up to run tests under Opscode's test-kitchen. It uses minitest-chef to run integration tests after the node has been converged to verify that the state of the node.
Test kitchen should run completely without exception using the default baseboxes provided by Opscode. Because Test Kitchen creates VirtualBox machines and runs through every configuration in the Kitchenfile, it may take some time for these tests to complete.
If your changes are only for a specific recipe, run only its configuration with Test Kitchen. If you are adding a new recipe, or other functionality such as a LWRP or definition, please add appropriate tests and ensure they run with Test Kitchen.
If any don't pass, investigate them before submitting your patch.
Any new feature should have unit tests included with the patch with good code coverage to help protect it from future changes. Similarly, patches that fix a bug or regression should have a regression test. Simply put, this is a test that would fail without your patch but passes with it. The goal is to ensure this bug doesn't regress in the future. Consider a regular expression that doesn't match a certain pattern that it should, so you provide a patch and a test to ensure that the part of the code that uses this regular expression works as expected. Later another contributor may modify this regular expression in a way that breaks your use cases. The test you wrote will fail, signalling to them to research your ticket and use case and accounting for it.
If you need help writing tests, please ask on the Chef Developer's mailing list, or the #chef-hacking IRC channel.
The versioning for my projects is X.Y.Z and uses Semantic Versioning.
- X is a major release, which may not be fully compatible with prior major releases
- Y is a minor release, which adds both new features and bug fixes
- Z is a patch release, which adds just bug fixes
These resources will help you learn more about Chef and connect to other members of the Chef community:
- chef and chef-dev mailing lists
- #chef and #chef-hacking IRC channels on irc.freenode.net
- Community Cookbook site
- Chef wiki
- Opscode Chef product page
Please do include tests for your contribution. If you need help, ask on the chef-dev mailing list or the #chef-hacking IRC channel. Not all platforms that a cookbook supports may be supported by Test Kitchen. Please provide evidence of testing your contribution if it isn't trivial so we don't have to duplicate effort in testing. Chef 10.14+ "doc" formatted output is sufficient.
Please do indicate new platform (families) or platform versions in the commit message, and update the relevant ticket.
If a contribution adds new platforms or platform versions, indicate such in the body of the commit message(s).
Please do use foodcritic to lint-check the cookbook. Except FC007, it should pass all correctness rules. FC007 is okay as long as the dependent cookbooks are required for the default behavior of the cookbook, such as to support an uncommon platform, secondary recipe, etc.
Please do ensure that your changes do not break or modify behavior for other platforms supported by the cookbook. For example if your changes are for Debian, make sure that they do not break on CentOS.
Please do not modify the version number in the metadata.rb, Opscode will select the appropriate version based on the release cycle information above.
Please do not update the CHANGELOG.md for a new version. Not all changes to a cookbook may be merged and released in the same versions. Opscode will update the CHANGELOG.md when releasing a new version of the cookbook.