Yet Another Cycling Forum

General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: aidan.f on 19 November, 2023, 05:24:11 pm

Title: github code edit etiquette and process
Post by: aidan.f on 19 November, 2023, 05:24:11 pm
I have found a gitrepo that I can modify slightly for a specific purpose.
https://github.com/softwarecrash/EPEver2MQTT (https://github.com/softwarecrash/EPEver2MQTT)
The author includes a CC licence.
I have forked and will start to make changes.
https://github.com/hedley-a/EPEverDatalogger (https://github.com/hedley-a/EPEverDatalogger)
My main concern is being embarrassed, I'm way short of the authors coding skill level.
Made a reasonable euro donation to Tobias.
Anything else I should/could  do?
Title: Re: github code edit etiquette and process
Post by: grams on 19 November, 2023, 05:39:39 pm
Normal GitHub etiquette is to fork, make changes in your repository and then - if the changes are generally applicable to other users - submit a “pull request” to the original author.

You don’t need to document anything and you should not be shy about your coding abilities.

A slight snag is they’ve chosen the “No derivatives” version of the CC license, which prohibits distributing modified copies. Taken strictly this might apply to committing changes to a public fork, but they appear to have accepted pull requests from other forks so they obviously don’t care. *shrug*
Title: Re: github code edit etiquette and process
Post by: aidan.f on 19 November, 2023, 07:52:36 pm
Thanks for the update, Had not spotted clause in the CC licence. Just a hobby project - one or two off, so could go private.
Title: Re: github code edit etiquette and process
Post by: Afasoas on 19 November, 2023, 09:42:38 pm
If in doubt, contact the repo maintainers. They may welcome the contact.

IME expected ettiquete varies hugely between projects.

The maintainers might prefer it if you raise an issue detailing your problem/proposed changes first. You can use the issue to ask whether they are happy for you to make a public fork, in order to later raise a PR which they can merge if they want to.

The nice thing about doing this, is that it leaves a record for anyone who comes along in future with the same problem/solution. Also worth checking historic closed issues for any issues/suggestions similar to your own.