my-rook-config/Documentation/development-flow.md

---
title: Contributing
weight: 50
---

# Contributing

## Prerequisites

1. [GO 1.8](https://golang.org/dl/) or greater installed
2. Git client installed
3. Github account

## Initial Setup

### Create a Fork

From your browser navigate to [http://github.com/rook/rook](http://github.com/rook/rook) and click the "Fork" button.

### Clone Your Fork

Open a console window and do the following;

```bash
# Create the rook repo path
mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/rook

# Navigate to the local repo path and clone your fork
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/rook

# Clone your fork, where <user> is your github account name
git clone git@github.com:<user>/rook.git

cd rook
```

### Add Upstream Remote

First you will need to add the upstream remote to your local git:
```bash
# Add 'upstream' to the list of remotes
git remote add upstream https://github.com/rook/rook.git

# Verify the remote was added
git remote -v
```
Now you should have at least `origin` and `upstream` remotes. You can also add other remotes to collaborate with other contributors.


## Development

To add a feature or to make a bug fix, you will need to create a branch in your fork and then submit a pull request (PR) from the branch.

### Create a Branch

From a console, create a new branch based on your fork and start working on it:

```bash
# Checkout the master branch - you want your new branch to come from master
git checkout master

# Create a new branch with a simple, but descriptive name. Generally it will be two to three words separated by dashes and without numbers.
git checkout -b feature-name
```

Now you are ready to make the changes and commit to your branch.

### Updating Your Fork

During the development lifecycle, you will need to keep up-to-date with the latest upstream master. As others on the team push changes, you will need to `rebase` your commits on top of the latest. This avoids unnecessary merge commits and keeps the commit history clean.

Whenever you need to update your local repository, you never want to merge. You **always** will rebase. Otherwise you will end up with merge commits in the git history. If you have any modified files, you will first have to stash them (`git stash save "<some description>"`).

```bash
git rebase upstream/master
```

Rebasing is a very powerful feature of Git. You need to understand how it works or else you will risk losing your work. Read about it in the [Git documentation](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase), it will be well worth it. In a nutshell, rebasing does the following:
- "Unwinds" your local commits. Your local commits are removed temporarily from the history.
- The latest changes from upstream are added to the history
- Your local commits are re-applied one by one
- If there are merge conflicts, you will be prompted to fix them before continuing. Read the output closely. It will tell you how to complete the rebase.
- When done rebasing, you will see all of your commits in the history.

## Submitting a Pull Request

Once you have implemented the feature or bug fix in your branch, you will open a PR to the upstream rook repo. Before opening the PR ensure you have added unit tests, are passing the E2E tests, cleaned your commit history, and have rebased on the latest upstream.

In order to open a pull request (PR) it is required to be up to date with the latest changes upstream. If other commits are pushed upstream before your PR is merged, you will also need to rebase again before it will be merged.

### Regression Testing

All pull requests must pass the unit and e2e smoke tests before they can be merged. These tests automatically
run as a part of the build process. The results of these tests along with code reviews and other criterias determine whether
your request will be accepted into the rook/rook repo. It is prudent to run all tests locally on your development box prior to submitting a pull request to the rook/rook repo.

#### Unit Tests

From the root of your local Rook repo execute the following to run all of the unit tests:

```bash
build/run make test
```

Unit tests for individual packages can be run with the standard `go test` command. Before you open a PR, confirm that you have sufficient code coverage on the packages that you changed. View the `coverage.html` in a browser to inspect your new code.

```bash
go test -coverprofile=coverage.out
go tool cover -html=coverage.out -o coverage.html
```

#### Running the E2E Tests
For instructions on how to execute the end to end smoke test suite,
follow the [e2e instructions](../e2e/README.md).

### Commit History

To prepare your branch to open a PR, you will need to have the minimal number of logical commits so we can maintain
a clean commit history. Most commonly a PR will include a single commit where all changes are squashed, although
sometimes there will be multiple logical commits.

```bash
# Inspect your commit history to determine if you need to squash commits
git log

# Rebase the commits and edit, squash, or even reorder them as you determine will keep the history clean.
# In this example, the last 5 commits will be opened in the git rebase tool.
git rebase -i HEAD~5
```

Once your commit history is clean, ensure you have based on the [latest upstream](#Updating-your-fork) before you open the PR.

### Submitting

Go to the [Rook github](https://www.github.com/rook/rook) to open the PR. If you have pushed recently, you should see an obvious link to open the PR. If you have not pushed recently, go to the Pull Request tab and select your fork and branch for the PR.

After the PR is open, you can make changes simply by pushing new commits. Your PR will track the changes in your fork and update automatically.

### Backport a Fix to a Release Branch

The flow for getting a fix into a release branch is to first make the commit to master following the process outlined above.
After the commit is in master, you'll need to cherry-pick the commit to the intended release branch.
You can do this by first creating a local branch that is based off the release branch, for example:
```console
git fetch --all
git checkout -b backport-my-fix upstream/release-0.6
```

Then go ahead and cherry-pick the commit using the hash of the commit itself, **not** the merge commit hash:
```console
git cherry-pick -x 099cc27b73a8d77e0504831f374a7e117ad0a2e4
```

This will immediately create a cherry-picked commit with a nice message saying where the commit was cherry-picked from.
Now go ahead and push to your origin:
```console
git push origin HEAD
```

The last step is to open a PR with the base being the intended release branch.
Once the PR is approved and merged, then your backported change will be available in the next release.