Quick Start for New Contributors

Exosphere has a lighter-weight process for new contributors. If you're making your first or second contribution to Exosphere, you only need this Quick Start guide. Otherwise, please see the Core Contributor Onboarding section of contributing.md.

New contributors, please check with a project maintainer before attempting to solve an issue of weight 5 or higher.

This assumes familiarity with a git-based contribution workflow on platforms like GitHub. If you have never done that, or you are stuck for any other reason, ask for guidance in our chat. We're happy to help.

Exosphere is hosted on gitlab.com, a service that is similar to GitHub in many ways. One difference is that a code contribution on GitLab is called a merge request (MR) instead of a pull request (PR), but the concept and workflow is exactly the same.

  • Create an account on gitlab.com, unless you have one already.
  • Create your own fork of exosphere/exosphere.
  • Clone your fork locally.
    • git clone https://gitlab.com/your-gitlab-username/exosphere
  • Compile and run the app on your computer; see Running Exosphere For Development Work.
    • Optional but helpful step: configure your editor to run elm-format whenever you save a file. Save .elm files often to automatically apply code formatting.
  • Make your code changes, compile the app again, and confirm that your changes work.
    • Ask in chat if you need a set of credentials to test the app against a real OpenStack cloud.
  • When you're satisfied with your changes, create a new branch, make a commit, and push the commit(s) to your origin on GitLab.
    • git switch -c upside-down-support
    • git add *
    • git commit -m 'add a setting to display the entire app upside down'
    • git push -u origin upside-down-support
  • Browse to the URL in the output of your git push command to create a Merge Request.
    • Target this MR at the master branch of the upstream project (exosphere/exosphere).
    • Fill out the MR description template.
    • A maintainer will review your MR and respond if we need anything else from you.
  • If you need to make more changes, continue committing and pushing them. Your merge request will update on each git push.