In this article, if you want to contribute to Pardus, we will talk about how you should do it and explain it by giving a small example. For this, we first need to talk about Fork and Pull Request logic on GitHub. If you haven't read our previous article about Git, here You can read.

What is Fork?

First, let's move forward by explaining what a Fork is. Fork allows you to include an exact copy of the project you want to contribute to your GitHub address (account). You make all the improvements you make on this Fork repo, so you don't make any changes to the original repo.

What is Pull Request?

Pull Request, on the other hand, is a method used to present changes you want to add or change to a project's code to other project participants. The changes you make with the Pull Request are reviewed by the owner of the project or other participants, comments are made and included in the code of the project if deemed appropriate.

How will we use them?

First of all, where the source codes of Pardus are, github.com/pardus Let's go to the address. We have created for those who want to experience Pull Request for the first time, pardus-was-here Let's choose the project. You can contribute to this project we have chosen by repeating the steps we will follow below.

We will see the following steps one by one to make the changes we will make in the project: 

  • First, we fork the project we have chosen for our own account. For this, on the page where we view the project, we click on the "Fork" button.
  • Then we copy the project to our computer. “git clone” We clone using the command. In this section, we did the cloning process using HTTPS.
  • README.md files, which are mostly included in projects, are very important when you want to contribute to a project. “What should you pay attention to? What are the code writing standards for the codes and documents you have developed and want to be included in the project? How should you write the descriptions of the code you wrote?” The standards determined in such matters are included in this file. pardus-was-here When we examine the README.md file of the project, we find it in the memorybook folder. “YYYY-MM-DD-name-surname” It directs us to create a file in format and shows in detail how the content of the file should be.
  • Now go to the directory we cloned as mentioned and inside the memorybook folder “YYYY-MM-DD-name-surname” We create a file in the format. We can do this from the command line using nano as follows. 
nano YYY-AA-GG-ad-soyad
  • We write our information in the file we created, as specified in the README.md file, according to the following order.
Name Surname Date City/Organization - Operating System
Optional Message
  • "go add" ve “git commit” Save the changes using the commands. Commit message should be in the format “Name Surname was here”.
git add .
git commit -m <commit mesajınız>
  • "go push" Before using the command we need to get the token for authentication. For this Settings from the section Developer settingsWe click . Personal access tokensunder Tokens (classic)We choose .
  • We choose Generate new token (classic) and create our token. Then we use the “git push” command and write the token we created instead of the password. As a final step, we go to the pardus-was-here project in our own account on the GitHub web interface. Click on the "Pull Request" button. Then, on the page that appears, we click create pull request and create our pull request. We can get feedback and make bug fixes by following our pull request.

If you have done the above steps correctly, Pardus GitHub account moderators can display your Pull Request request on the screen shown above. If you have proceeded in accordance with the above steps, your Pull Request will be accepted in a short time and your changes will be included in the project. You can view these changes on the project page.

After all these processes, you are now a volunteer Pardus developer, welcome aboard.