maint: Mention the Signed-off-by line in 'HACKING'.
[jackhill/guix/guix.git] / HACKING
1 -*- mode: org; coding: utf-8; -*-
2
3 #+TITLE: Hacking GNU Guix and Its Incredible Distro
4
5 Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
6 Copyright © 2015, 2017 Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org>
7 Copyright © 2017 Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>
8
9 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
10 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
11 notice and this notice are preserved.
12
13 * Contributing
14
15 See the manual for useful hacking informations, either by running
16
17 info -f doc/guix.info "Contributing"
18
19 or by checking the [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Contributing][web copy of the manual]].
20
21 * Commit Access
22
23 For frequent contributors, having write access to the repository is
24 convenient. When you deem it necessary, feel free to ask for it on the
25 mailing list. When you get commit access, please make sure to follow the
26 policy below (discussions of the policy can take place on guix-devel@gnu.org.)
27
28 Non-trivial patches should always be posted to guix-patches@gnu.org (trivial
29 patches include fixing typos, etc.) This mailing list fills the
30 patch-tracking database at [[https://bugs.gnu.org/guix-patches]]; see
31 "Contributing" in the manual for details.
32
33 For patches that just add a new package, and a simple one, it’s OK to commit,
34 if you’re confident (which means you successfully built it in a chroot setup,
35 and have done a reasonable copyright and license auditing.) Likewise for
36 package upgrades, except upgrades that trigger a lot of rebuilds (for example,
37 upgrading GnuTLS or GLib.) We have a mailing list for commit notifications
38 (guix-commits@gnu.org), so people can notice. Before pushing your changes,
39 make sure to run ‘git pull --rebase’.
40
41 All commits that are pushed to the central repository on Savannah must be
42 signed with an OpenPGP key, and the public key should be uploaded to your user
43 account on Savannah and to public key servers, such as ‘pgp.mit.edu’. To
44 configure Git to automatically sign commits, run:
45
46 git config commit.gpgsign true
47 git config user.signingkey CABBA6EA1DC0FF33
48
49 You can prevent yourself from accidentally pushing unsigned commits to Savannah
50 by using the pre-push Git hook called 'pre-push'. It's located at
51 'etc/git/pre-push'.
52
53 When pushing a commit on behalf of somebody else, please add a Signed-off-by
54 line at the end of the commit log message (e.g. with ‘git am --signoff’).
55 This improves tracking of who did what.
56
57 For anything else, please post to guix-patches@gnu.org and leave time for a
58 review, without committing anything. If you didn’t receive any reply
59 after two weeks, and if you’re confident, it’s OK to commit.
60
61 That last part is subject to being adjusted, allowing individuals to commit
62 directly on non-controversial changes on parts they’re familiar with.