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How to Contribute

This topic uses the vesoft-inc/nebula repository as an example to introduce how to contribute to Nebula Graph related projects and their documentation. For the complete project list, visit the vesoft-inc repositories on GitHub.

Sign the CLA

Click the Sign in with Github to agree button to sign the CLA.

What is CLA?

Step 1: Fork in the Cloud

  1. Visit https://github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula.
  2. Click Fork button (top right) to establish a cloud-based fork.

Step 2: Clone Fork to Local Storage

Define a local working directory:

# Define your working directory
working_dir=$HOME/Workspace

Set user to match your Github profile name:

user={your Github profile name}

Create your clone:

mkdir -p $working_dir
cd $working_dir
git clone https://github.com/$user/nebula.git
# the following is recommended
# or: git clone git@github.com:$user/nebula.git

cd $working_dir/nebula
git remote add upstream https://github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula.git
# or: git remote add upstream git@github.com:vesoft-inc/nebula.git

# Never push to upstream master since you do not have write access.
git remote set-url --push upstream no_push

# Confirm that your remotes make sense:
# It should look like:
# origin    git@github.com:$(user)/nebula.git (fetch)
# origin    git@github.com:$(user)/nebula.git (push)
# upstream  https://github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula (fetch)
# upstream  no_push (push)
git remote -v

Step 3: Create a Branch

Get your local master up to date:

cd $working_dir/nebula
git fetch upstream
git checkout master
git rebase upstream/master

Checkout a new branch from master:

git checkout -b myfeature

NOTE: Because your PR often consists of several commits, which might be squashed while being merged into upstream, we strongly suggest you open a separate topic branch to make your changes on. After merged, this topic branch could be just abandoned, thus you could synchronize your master branch with upstream easily with a rebase like above. Otherwise, if you commit your changes directly into master, maybe you must use a hard reset on the master branch, like:

git fetch upstream
git checkout master
git reset --hard upstream/master
git push --force origin master

Step 4: Develop

Code Style

We adopt cpplint to make sure that the project conforms to Google's coding style guides. The checker will be implemented before the code is committed.

Unit Tests Required

Please add unit tests for your new features or bugfixes.

Build Your Code with Unit Tests Enable

Please refer to the build source code documentation to compile.

Make sure you have enabled the build of unit tests by setting -DENABLE_TESTING=ON.

Run Tests

In the root folder of nebula , run the following command:

ctest -j$(nproc)

Step 5: Bring Your Branch Update to Date

# While on your myfeature branch.
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master

You need to bring the head branch up to date after other collaborators merge pull requests to the base branch.

Step 6: Commit

Commit your changes.

git commit

Likely you'll go back and edit/build/test some more than commit --amend in a few cycles.

Step 7: Push

When ready to review (or just to establish an offsite backup or your work), push your branch to your fork on github.com:

git push origin myfeature

Step 8: Create a Pull Request

  1. Visit your fork at https://github.com/$user/nebula (replace $user obviously).
  2. Click the Compare & pull request button next to your myfeature branch.

Step 9: Get a Code Review

Once your pull request has been opened, it will be assigned to at least two reviewers. Those reviewers will do a thorough code review to make sure that the changes meet the repository's contributing guidelines and other quality standards.


Last update: April 8, 2021