[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] [[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]] [[!meta title="Contribute to the Web Pages"]] [[!toc levels=3]] # General Information (!) 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. ## Syntax Before doing any changes, you are encouraged to play a bit in the [[sandbox]], to become familiar with the [[ikiwiki/Markdown]] syntax. Get some [[help_on_formatting|ikiwiki/formatting]]. ## Commit Messages Please comment every change you make, however small. Keep all comments short and to the point, e.g. "Fixed typo." or "Added link to main page.". ## Asking Questions -- on Sub-Pages Feel free to ask questions or report problems on every page's [[discussion]] sub-page. They're reachable from the *Discussion* link on the top of the page, which will, when selected, create a new page if there isn't one yet. ## Editing Pages Every page on the site is editable, like in a wiki. Feel free to join in, but we do have some simple requests. Please try to match the *tone* of your topics and edits with the existing topics. If we all pull in the same direction these pages will be more useful for everyone, especially for our own use. ### News Items There are [[more detailed instructions about editing news items|news]]. ## Staging Area When you commit changes, either using the web interface or checking them in into the repository; they won't become visible on immediately, but on instead. The former set of pages, the official GNU Hurd web appearance, will be updated periodically (but manually) from the latter one, where every edit is visible immediately. This is so that we have a chance to have the pages make fit for appearance on `www.gnu.org`, but you are nevertheless able to work on all pages unrestrictedly. # Editing via the Web Interface When you have found a page you want to work on, just follow the *Edit* link at the top of the page. When doing this for the first time, this will first redirect you to a page where you will have to create an account. After logging in, you can edit pages. # Working on a Checkout of the Git Repository (!) What is being described here is 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 add arbitrary data files, and so on. (!) Before attempting any bigger editing work (to which you are sincerely invited!) be sure to check the involved pages' *Discussion* sub-pages (linked from the pages' header line) and in there take down (short) notes about the editing endeavours you're going to undertake. Doing so should help to (a) avoid double work and (b) avoid merge conflicts if you install your changes into the main repository. ## Identifying Yourself First, let's make sure that you're properly identifying yourself towards Git. $ git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT Thomas Schwinge 1186743435 +0200 If it doesn't look akin to that for you, you'd better adjust either your `EMAIL` environment variable or alternatively tell Git about your real identity: $ git config --global user.name 'Your Name' $ git config --global user.email you@somewhere.invalid ## Getting the Sources To be 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*|public_hurd_boxen]] and need to be a member of the *hurd-web* group. (It's also recommended that you set up your local SSH configuration as advised on that page.) If you have an account on there: $ git clone flubber:~hurd-web/hurd-web [dest] If you don't have such an account or don't have your login data handy, you can still get pages the read-only way. Note that this -- currently -- is not the data from the master server, but from a mirror of it, so it may be lagging behind a bit from time to time. $ git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/hurd/web.git [dest] If that also doesn't work out, you have yet another chance: pull over the HTTP protocol. Not very efficient (read: rather inefficient), but it works. This is also read-only. $ git clone http://www.bddebian.com:8888/git/hurd-web [dest] For all cases: if you omit `[dest]` it will default to `hurd-web`. Later, you can just `cd` into the `hurd-web` directory and run a `git pull` to get hold of the latest changes others have been installing in the mean time. (In most cases, even better would be to do a `git fetch`, followed by a `git rebase origin/master` to avoid useless *Merge branch ...* messages. See the Git documentation for details.) ## Editing the Content But now: work on these files. $ cd hurd-web/ $ emacs hurd/ng.mdwn $ # Check what you've done. $ git diff hurd/ng.mdwn $ git commit hurd/ng.mdwn [...] $ # Add a new file. $ emacs microkernel/mach/issues.mdwn $ git add microkernel/mach/issues.mdwn $ git commit microkernel/mach/issues.mdwn [...] $ [...] Remember that at this stage your commits have only been installed into your personal working copy. You'll finally have to explicitly install your changes into the master repository, see below. ## Preview Changes You can also locally get the whole set of pages rendered to HTML: $ hurd-web/render_locally [...] scanning contributing/web_pages.mdwn rendering contributing/web_pages.mdwn Now open `hurd-web.rendered/index.html' to browse the pages. ### ikiwiki's `w3mmode` If you're a [`w3m`](http://w3m.sourceforge.net/) user, you can also use `w3m` to edit your files locally, as it were done through the web interface at . First, generate the wrapper. Unless the configuration is changed, this has to be done only once. $ hurd-web/render_locally --w3m-wrapper successfully generated /home/thomas/.ikiwiki/wrappers/hurd-web.cgi Render the pages: $ hurd-web/render_locally --w3m [...] scanning contributing/web_pages.mdwn rendering contributing/web_pages.mdwn Now open `hurd-web.rendered.w3m/index.html' to browse the pages. Invoke `w3m`: $ w3m hurd-web.rendered.w3m/index.html Or, to directly create a new page: $ w3m 'file:///$LIB/ikiwiki-w3m.cgi/hurd-web.cgi?page=open_issues/gnumach_has_a_bug&do=create' Note that the changes you do via `w3m` will not be committed to the VCS (see [[render_locally]] for details.) ## Publish Your Changes 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 really simple: $ 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 publish. 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 or upload them somewhere for us to download them from.