Subject: Re: Some help on gitweb project.

From: Andrew Sayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 19:53:34 +0100

Jaseem and I discussed this in IRC.  You can see the log here:
http://colabti.org/irclogger/irclogger_log/git-devel?date=2012-05-13

Or see the (roughly) equivalent text below.

On 13/05/12 18:41, jaseem abid wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> CC : Andrew Sayers, Jakub Narębski
> 
> I have been working on gitweb for a couple of days as part of a
> rejected GSoC proposal. I would love to get some help on this and if
> somebody can, that would be thankful.
> 
> 1. How is code tested after some change? I am not talking about unit
> testing but about making sure that application is doing what it is
> actually intended to do. Do you have to re - install git/gitweb with
> every version of code you commit and make sure that it works well and
> as expected? Or, is there some other way? Sorry but I am a newbie when
> it comes to FOSS contribution and as well working on a project of this
> magnitude.

Your later suggestion of symlinking /usr/share/giweb seems like it
should work.  Alternatively, you could point Apache straight at your
repo.  I don't think this is a situation where subtle issues creep up on
you - if it looks like it works, it probably does.

> 2. How I should be committing ?

Private commits are your own business.  When it comes time to push work
out for public consumption, I like to think of it as telling a story -
start at the beginning and concisely explain what happened.

> 3. How will I submit a commit like "Adding jQuery library"? Mail a
> whole minimized JavaScript library to the mailing list? How can
> somebody crosscheck the contents of a minimized JavaScript library ?

Probably best not to include jQuery in git itself - aside from anything
else, it will be a big hassle to maintain.  Better to have a variable
like "jquery_url" with a default like
"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js" (i.e.
Google's CDN).  That avoids the need to include jQuery in git, and lets
people e.g. link different gitweb instances to a single library on their
local network.

> 4. At what stage is code to be submitted? After the full project is
> done or in a modular manner? Can I ask for some review and help from
> if I push the code to github and share the link, or do I have to mail
> that also? I don't want to repeat this :
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17

I expect it will become obvious when to submit code as your work
continues.  For example, if you get into TDD and write a bunch of unit
tests before anything else, you might want to send them in their own
patch series.  I guess it's more likely you'll end up with one big patch
series though.

Speaking for myself, I'm happy to look at code either here or on github.

> 5. What should be my base commit/branch for starting the work ?

Documentation/SubmittingPatches says:

 - A new feature should be based on 'master' in general.

	- Andrew