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Contributing to Docker
Want to hack on Docker? Awesome! Here are instructions to get you started. They are probably not perfect, please let us know if anything feels wrong or incomplete.
Build Environment
For instructions on setting up your development environment, please see our dedicated dev environment setup docs.
Contribution guidelines
Pull requests are always welcome
We are always thrilled to receive pull requests, and do our best to process them as fast as possible. Not sure if that typo is worth a pull request? Do it! We will appreciate it.
If your pull request is not accepted on the first try, don't be discouraged! If there's a problem with the implementation, hopefully you received feedback on what to improve.
We're trying very hard to keep Docker lean and focused. We don't want it to do everything for everybody. This means that we might decide against incorporating a new feature. However, there might be a way to implement that feature on top of docker.
Discuss your design on the mailing list
We recommend discussing your plans on the mailing list before starting to code - especially for more ambitious contributions. This gives other contributors a chance to point you in the right direction, give feedback on your design, and maybe point out if someone else is working on the same thing.
Create issues...
Any significant improvement should be documented as a github issue before anybody starts working on it.
...but check for existing issues first!
Please take a moment to check that an issue doesn't already exist documenting your bug report or improvement proposal. If it does, it never hurts to add a quick "+1" or "I have this problem too". This will help prioritize the most common problems and requests.
Conventions
Fork the repo and make changes on your fork in a feature branch:
- If it's a bugfix branch, name it XXX-something where XXX is the number of the issue
- If it's a feature branch, create an enhancement issue to announce your intentions, and name it XXX-something where XXX is the number of the issue.
Submit unit tests for your changes. Go has a great test framework built in; use it! Take a look at existing tests for inspiration. Run the full test suite on your branch before submitting a pull request.
Update the documentation when creating or modifying features. Test
your documentation changes for clarity, concision, and correctness, as
well as a clean documentation build. See docs/README.md for more
information on building the docs and how docs get released.
Write clean code. Universally formatted code promotes ease of writing, reading,
and maintenance. Always run go fmt before committing your changes. Most
editors have plugins that do this automatically, and there's also a git
pre-commit hook:
curl -o .git/hooks/pre-commit https://raw.github.com/edsrzf/gofmt-git-hook/master/fmt-check && chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-commit
Pull requests descriptions should be as clear as possible and include a reference to all the issues that they address.
Code review comments may be added to your pull request. Discuss, then make the suggested modifications and push additional commits to your feature branch. Be sure to post a comment after pushing. The new commits will show up in the pull request automatically, but the reviewers will not be notified unless you comment.
Before the pull request is merged, make sure that you squash your commits into
logical units of work using git rebase -i and git push -f. After every
commit the test suite should be passing. Include documentation changes in the
same commit so that a revert would remove all traces of the feature or fix.
Commits that fix or close an issue should include a reference like Closes #XXX
or Fixes #XXX, which will automatically close the issue when merged.
Add your name to the AUTHORS file, but make sure the list is sorted and your name and email address match your git configuration. The AUTHORS file is regenerated occasionally from the git commit history, so a mismatch may result in your changes being overwritten.
Approval
Docker maintainers use LGTM (looks good to me) in comments on the code review to indicate acceptance.
A change requires LGTMs from an absolute majority of the maintainers of each component affected. For example, if a change affects docs/ and registry/, it needs an absolute majority from the maintainers of docs/ AND, separately, an absolute majority of the maintainers of registry
For more details see MAINTAINERS.md
How can I become a maintainer?
- Step 1: learn the component inside out
- Step 2: make yourself useful by contributing code, bugfixes, support etc.
- Step 3: volunteer on the irc channel (#docker@freenode)
Don't forget: being a maintainer is a time investment. Make sure you will have time to make yourself available. You don't have to be a maintainer to make a difference on the project!