Contributing ↑

Contribution to diff-lcs is encouraged in any form: a bug report, a feature request, or code contributions. There are a few DOs and DON’Ts for contributions.

  • DO:

  • Keep the coding style that already exists for any updated Ruby code (support or otherwise). I use Standard Ruby for linting and formatting.

  • Use thoughtfully-named topic branches for contributions. Rebase your commits into logical chunks as necessary.

  • Use quality commit messages.

  • Add your name or GitHub handle to CONTRIBUTORS.md and a record in the CHANGELOG.md as a separate commit from your main change. (Follow the style in the CHANGELOG.md and provide a link to your PR.)

  • Add or update tests as appropriate for your change. The test suite is written in RSpec.

  • Add or update documentation as appropriate for your change. The documentation is RDoc; diff-lcs does not use extensions that may be present in alternative documentation generators.

  • DO NOT:

  • Modify VERSION in lib/diff/lcs/version.rb. When your patch is accepted and a release is made, the version will be updated at that point.

  • Modify diff-lcs.gemspec; it is a generated file. (You may use rake gemspec to regenerate it if your change involves metadata related to gem itself).

  • Modify the Gemfile.

Test Dependencies ↑

diff-lcs uses Ryan Davis’s [Hoe] to manage the release process, and it adds a number of rake tasks. You will mostly be interested in rake, which runs tests in the same way that rake spec does.

To assist with the installation of the development dependencies for diff-lcs, I have provided a Gemfile pointing to the (generated) diff-lcs.gemspec file. minitar.gemspec file. This will permit you to use bundle install to install the dependencies.

You can run tests with code coverage analysis by running rake spec:coverage.

Workflow ↑

Here’s the most direct way to get your work merged into the project:

  • Fork the project.

  • Clone your fork (git clone git://github.com/<username>/diff-lcs.git).

  • Create a topic branch to contain your change (git checkout -b my_awesome_feature).

  • Hack away, add tests. Not necessarily in that order.

  • Make sure everything still passes by running rake.

  • If necessary, rebase your commits into logical chunks, without errors.

  • Push the branch up (git push origin my_awesome_feature).

  • Create a pull request against halostatue/diff-lcs and describe what your change does and the why you think it should be merged.