Doc: Add additional information to the contributing page.

Updates for new users related to PR's.
Although some of this info is in other places, a new user should
not need to look at 'commiter' related docs.

Reviewed-by: Frederik Wedel-Heinen <fwh.openssl@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Eugene Syromiatnikov <esyr@openssl.org>
Reviewed-by: Paul Dale <paul.dale@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Tim Hudson <tjh@openssl.org>
MergeDate: Fri Mar 13 08:28:19 2026
(Merged from https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/30336)

diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 20bf3910a1e3792378e5bb46b0798de42069b7c3..3813c1e23d2a8dbc4d2ae3ab09d2c081da4aa043 100644 (file)
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -39,6 +39,16 @@ with clear explanations of what is changing and why.  Long descriptions
 are encouraged if they aid understanding.  Commit message titles (their
 first line) should be kept to 50-70 characters if possible.
 
+Pull Requests (PR's) go through multiple phases before they are merged. In the
+first phase the label 'approval: review pending' is added. Once you receive 2 or
+more approvals from [Committers] the label is changed to 'approval: done' and
+24 hours after this the label changes to 'approval: ready to merge'. At some time
+after this your PR will be merged and the PR is closed. Reviewers may ask you to
+make changes at any phase before the Pull Request is merged, and any changes
+(that are not just a rebase) will require re-approval.
+
+[Committers]: https://openssl-library.org/about/committers/index.html
+
 To make it easier to review and accept your pull request, please follow these
 guidelines:
 
@@ -127,3 +137,35 @@ guidelines:
 
  8. Guidelines on how to integrate error output of new crypto library modules
     can be found in [crypto/err/README.md](crypto/err/README.md).
+
+ 9. Once your Pull Request gets to the stage of being reviewed fixup commits
+    should be used where possible. Fixup commits are squashed when the PR is
+    finally merged. Fixup commits are done in the following way:
+
+    ```
+
+        # Add one or more updated files that needed changes
+        git add <filename>
+
+        # Do a fixup commit
+        # <commit-id> is the id of a previous commit that you want to fix up.
+        git commit --fixup <commit-id>
+
+        # Do a non forced push
+        git push
+    ```
+
+    To view commit-id's use:
+
+    ```
+       git log
+    ```
+
+10. If a Pull Request addresses an [issue](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/)
+    the commit should include the line:
+
+    ```
+        Fixes #XXXXX
+    ```
+
+    where XXXXX is the issue number.