# How to Contribute to This Wiki

(!) Some general hints first; they may sound very familiar from other software
projects:

* Do independent changes *separately*: don't aggregate changes that don't
  belong together.
* Install your changes *early* and *often*: don't hold your contribution back
  until you think it is perfect.


## Edit Via the Web Interface

When you found a page you want to work on, just follow the *Edit* link on the
top of the page.  When doing this for the first time, this will first transfer
you to a page where you have to create a wiki account.  After logging in, you
can edit the wiki pages.


## Working on a Checkout of the git Repository

(!) What is being described here are only the basics.  The checkouts are
completely valid git repositories and can (and want to) be treated as such.
Consult the git documentation about how to shuffle around with branches, how to
rename files, how to upload arbitrary data files, and so on.


For being able to do a checkout from which you can later directly push your
changes back into the master repository, you need a
[[shell_account_on_*flubber*|Hurd/PublicHurdBoxen]].  (It's also very much
recommenable that you set up your local ssh configuration as advised on that
page.)

	$ git clone flubber:~wiki/wiki [dest]

If you don't have such an account or don't have your login data handy, you can
still get the pages the read-only way.

*Not yet available.*

	$ git clone git://flubber.bddebian.com/wiki [dest]

For both cases: if you omit *[dest]* it will default to *wiki*.

Later, you can just *cd* into the *wiki* directory and run a *git pull* to get
hold of the latest changes others have installed.


But now: work on these files.

	$ cd wiki/
	$ emacs Hurd/NextHurd.mdwn
	$ git commit Hurd/NextHurd.mdwn
	[...]
	$ emacs Hurd/DesignGoals.mdwn
	$ git commit Hurd/DesignGoals.mdwn
	[...]
	$ [...]

Remember that at this stage your commits have only been installed into your
personal working copy.  So, finally you'll explicitly have to install your
changes into the master repository.


You can also get them locally rendered to html pages.

	$ wiki/render_locally
	[...]
	scanning HowToContributeToThisWiki.mdwn
	rendering HowToContributeToThisWiki.mdwn
	
	Now open `wiki.rendered/index.html' to browse the wiki pages.


If you like what you've done, then it's now time to publish your changes.

If you can push directly into the master repository this is as simple as
follows.

	$ git push
	updating 'refs/heads/master'
	  from d83f93f34b69633ca1afb588001df7addd708faf
	  to   c0b8171de9c69e029bf998aafd4682105c217eb8
	Generating pack...
	[...]
	Updating web pages.  This may up to a few minutes at the utmost...

If you can't do that, then first prepare to publish your changes.

	$ git-format-patch -M -B origin
	0001-Be-a-bit-more-expressive.patch
	[...]

See through the generated **.patch* files and simply delete those you don't
want to pulish.

Finally, publish the good ones.  If you have a local mail transfer agent
running, the following is all you have to do.

	$ git-send-email --to web-hurd@gnu.org *.patch
	[...]

If you don't have an mta running, you'll have to find another way: either post
the **.patch* files to <web-hurd@gnu.org> or upload them somewhere for us to
download them from.