CONTRIBUTING: neomutt(1) can now be used to sign patches

[thirdparty/man-pages.git] / CONTRIBUTING

Name
       Contributing - instructions for contributing to the project

Synopsis
       Mailing list, patches, lint & check, style guide, bug reports,
       and notes

Description
   Mailing list
       The main discussions regarding development of the project,
       patches, bugs, news, doubts, etc. happen on the mailing list.
       To send an email to the project, send it to Alejandro and CC the
       mailing list:

           To: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
           Cc: <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>

       Please CC any relevant developers and mailing lists that may know
       about or be interested in the discussion.  If your email
       discusses a feature or change, and you know which developers
       added the feature or made the change that your email discusses,
       please CC them on the email; with luck they may review and
       comment on it.  If you don't know who the developers are, you may
       be able to discover that information from mailing list archives
       or from git(1) logs or logs in other version control systems.
       Obviously, if you are the developer of the feature being
       discussed in a man-pages email, please identify yourself as such.
       Relevant mailing lists may include:

           Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
           Cc: Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>
           Cc: Glibc <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>

       For other kernel mailing lists and maintainers, check the
       <MAINTAINERS> file in the Linux kernel repository.

       Please don't send HTML email; it will be discarded by the list.

       Archives:
             <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/>
             <https://marc.info/?l=linux-man>

       Subscription:
             It is not necessary to subscribe to the list to send an
             email.  For subscribing to the list, or information about
             it, go to
             <https://subspace.kernel.org/vger.kernel.org.html>.

   Sign your emails with PGP
        We encourage that you sign all of your emails sent to the
        mailing list, (especially) including the ones containing
        patches, with your PGP key.  This helps establish trust between
        you and other contributors of this project, and prevent others
        impersonating you.  If you don't have a key, it's not mandatory
        to sign your email, but you're encouraged to create and start
        using a PGP key.  See also:
        <https://www.gnupg.org/faq/gnupg-faq.html#use_pgpmime>

        There are many ways you can sign your patches, and it depends on
        your preferred tools.  You can use neomutt(1) (>= 20240201) as a
        driver for git-send-email(1).  In <~/.gitconfig>, add the
        following section:

            [sendemail]
                sendmailcmd = neomutt -C -H - && true

   Patches
       If you know how to fix a problem in a manual page (if not, see
       "Reporting bugs" below), then send a patch in an email.

       -  Follow the instructions for sending mail to the mailing list
          above.

       -  The subject of the email should contain "[patch]" in the
          subject line.

       The above is the minimum needed so that someone might respond to
       your patch.  If you did that and someone does not respond within
       a few days, then ping the email thread, "replying to all".  Make
       sure to send it to the maintainers in addition to the mailing
       list.

       To make your patch even more useful, please note the following
       points:

       -  Write a suitable subject line.  Make sure to mention the
          name(s) of the page(s) being patched.  Example:

             [patch] shmop.2: Add "(void *)" cast to RETURN VALUE

       -  Sign your patch with "Signed-off-by:".  Read about the
          "Developer's Certificate of Origin" at
          <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst>.
          When appropriate, other tags documented in that file, such as
          "Reported-by:", "Reviewed-by:", "Acked-by:", and
          "Suggested-by:" can be added to the patch.  The man-pages
          project also uses a "Cowritten-by:" tag with the obvious
          meaning.  Example:

              Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>

       -  Describe how you obtained the information in your patch.  For
          example, was it:

          -  by reading (or writing) the relevant kernel or (g)libc
             source code?  Please provide a pointer to the following
             code.

          -  from a commit message in the kernel or (g)libc source code
             repository?  Please provide a commit ID.

          -  by writing a test program?  Send it with the patch, but
             please make sure it's as simple as possible, and provide
             instructions on how to use it and/or a demo run.

          -  from a standards document?  Please name the standard, and
             quote the relevant text.

          -  from other documentation?  Please provide a pointer to that
             documentation.

          -  from a mailing list or online forum?  Please provide a URL
             if possible.

       -  Send patches in diff -u format in an email patch.  You may
          find it useful to employ git-send-email(1) and
          git-format-patch(1).

       -  Where relevant, include source code comments that cite commit
          hashes for relevant kernel or glibc changes:

              .\" commit <40-character-git-hash>

       -  For trivial patches, you can use subject tags:

          -  ffix: Formatting fix.
          -  tfix: Typo fix.
          -  wfix: Minor wording fix.
          -  srcfix: Change to manual page source that doesn't affect
             the output.

          Example:

              [patch] tcp.7: tfix

       -  Send logically separate patches.  For unrelated pages, or for
          logically-separate issues in the same page, send separate
          emails.

       -  Make patches against the latest version of the manual page.
          Use git(1) for getting the latest version.

   Lint & check
       If you plan to patch a manual page, consider running the linters
       and checks configured in the build system, to make sure your
       change doesn't add new warnings.  However, you might still get
       warnings that are not your fault.  To minimize that, do the
       following steps:

       (1)  First use make(1)'s -t option, so that make(1) knows that it
            only needs to lint & check again pages that you will touch.

                $ make -t lint check >/dev/null

       (2)  Run make(1) again, asking it to imagine that the page wou'll
            modify has been touched, to see which warnings you'll still
            see from that page that are not your fault.

                $ # replace 'man2/membarrier.2' by the page you'll modify
                $ make -W man2/membarrier.2 -k lint check

       (3)  Apply your changes, and then run make(1) again.  You can
            ignore warnings that you saw in step (2), but if you see any
            new ones, please fix them if you know how, or at least note
            them in your patch email.

                $ vi man2/membarrier.2  # do your work
                $ make -k lint check

       See <INSTALL> for a list of dependencies that this feature
       requires.  If you can't meet them all, don't worry; it will still
       run the linters and checks that you have available.

   Style guide
       For a description of the preferred layout of manual pages, as
       well as some style guide notes, see:

           $ man 7 man-pages

       It will also be interesting to consult groff_man(7) and
       groff_man_style(7) for understanding and writing good man(7)
       source code.

Reporting bugs
       Report bugs to the mailing list, following the instructions above
       for sending mails to the list.  If you can write a patch (see
       instructions for sending patches above), it's preferred.

       If you're unsure if the bug is in the manual page or in the code
       being documented (kernel, glibc, ...), it's best to send the
       report to both at the same time, that is, CC all the mailing
       lists that may be concerned by the report.

       Some distributions (for example Debian) apply patches to the
       upstream manual pages.  If you suspect the bug is in one of those
       patches, report it to your distribution maintainer.

       Send logically separate reports.  For unrelated pages, or for
       logically-separate issues in the same page, send separate emails.

       There's also a bugzilla, but we don't use it as much as the
       mailing list.

Notes
   External and autogenerated pages
       A few pages come from external sources.  Fixes to the pages
       should really go to the upstream source.

       tzfile(5), tzselect(8), zdump(8), and zic(8) come from the tz
       project <https://www.iana.org/time-zones>.

       bpf-helpers(7) is autogenerated from the Linux kernel sources
       using scripts.  See man-pages commits 53666f6c3 and 19c7f7839 for
       details.

Bugs
   Bugzilla:
       <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?component=man-pages>

See also
       man-pages(7)

       <https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/linux-man-ml.html>
       <https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/missing_pages.html>
       <https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/code_of_conduct.html>
       <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst>