nealrichardson commented on a change in pull request #7520: URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/7520#discussion_r444330998
########## File path: docs/source/developers/contributing.rst ########## @@ -124,29 +181,72 @@ To contribute a patch: `ARROW-767: [C++] Filesystem abstraction <https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/4225>`_). * Make sure that your code passes the unit tests. You can find instructions how to run the unit tests for each Arrow component in its respective README file. + +Core developers and others with a stake in the part of the project your change +affects will review, request changes, and hopefully indicate their approval +in the end. To make the review process smooth for everyone, try to + +* Break your work into small, single-purpose patches if possible. It’s much + harder to merge in a large change with a lot of disjoint features, and + particularly if you're new to the project, smaller changes are much easier + for maintainers to accept. * Add new unit tests for your code. +* Follow the style guides for the part(s) of the project you're modifying. + Some languages (C++, Python, and Rust, for example) run a lint check in + continuous integration. For all languages, see their respective developer + documentation and READMEs for style guidance. In general, try to make it look + as if the codebase has a single author, and emulate any conventions you see, + whether or not they are officially documented or checked. + +When tests are passing and the pull request has been approved by the interested +parties, a committer will merge the pull request. This is done with a +command-line utility that does a squash merge, so all of your commits will be +registered as a single commit to the master branch; this simplifies the +connection between JIRA issues and commits, and it makes it easier to bisect +history to identify where changes were introduced. A side effect of this way of +merging is that your pull request will appear in the GitHub interface to have +been "closed without merge". Do not be alarmed: if you look at the bottom, you +will see a message that says "@user closed this in $COMMIT". + +Local git conventions ++++++++++++++++++++++ + +If you are tracking the Arrow source repository locally, here are some tips +for using ``git``. + +All Arrow contributors work off of their personal fork of ``apache/arrow`` +and submit pull requests "upstream". Once you've cloned your fork of Arrow, +be sure to:: + + $ git remote add upstream https://github.com/apache/arrow + +to set the "upstream" repository. + +You are encouraged to develop on branches, rather than your own "master" branch, +and it helps to keep your fork's master branch synced with ``upstream/master``. -Thank you in advance for your contributions! +To start a new branch, pull the latest from upstream first:: -Common Git conventions followed within the project --------------------------------------------------- + $ git fetch upstream + $ git checkout master + $ git reset --hard upstream/master Review comment: Learn something new every day. I generally treat `origin/master` as disposable and wish GitHub had a way to keep it automatically in sync with `upstream/master`, but that's neither here nor there. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service. To respond to the message, please log on to GitHub and use the URL above to go to the specific comment. For queries about this service, please contact Infrastructure at: us...@infra.apache.org
