CONTRIBUTORS.md

Contribution guidelines

• Rebase your changes on master
• No merge commits allowed
• Pull requests will not be squashed on merge
• Commits should stand on their own
  • Each commit should not break master (so tools like git bisect can work)
  • The message of each commit should clearly justify why the changes are necessary/useful
  • The amount of detail necessary in the commit message scales exponentially with the size of the actual diff
  • For that reason, small (and ideally atomic) commits are preferred to monolithic ones
    • i.e. where possible separate unrelated changes into more than one commit
    • separate refactoring/moving/renaming changes that do not affect observable behavior from functional changes that do
    • learn about and use: git stash git add -p git commit --amend git commit --fixup git commit --rebase -i --autosquash

Philosophical concerns:

• The directories present at the top level of the repository represent boundaries. Be mindful when crossing them (is there a different solution?)
• The only code that should live in the top level itself (ideally) should be glue that holds the pieces together