path: root/contributing/web_pages.mdwn

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[[!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]].

<a name="staging_area">
## Staging Area
</a>

When you commit changes, either using the web interface or checking them in
into the repository; they won't become visible on
<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/> immediately, but on
<http://www.bddebian.com:8888/~hurd-web/> 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 <tschwinge@gnu.org> 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
<http://www.bddebian.com:8888/~hurd-web/>.

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 <web-hurd@gnu.org> or upload them somewhere for us to
download them from.