Contributing to Visual2

The second section of this page contains a walk-through of how to use git, however there are very many other guides which may be used in addition.

The first section contains general contribution guidelines and must be read before you start work.

Contribution Guidelines

• Ask to be given write access to the Visual2 repo (unless you already have this) if you want to contribute.
• Visual2 repo Issues are the main vehicle for discussing enhancements: they can refer to Wiki pages where more info is needed.
• To document the fact that you are doing something *create an issue and assign yourself to it. That will also allow discussion etc. Do this before the work.
• Check existing issues for overlap
• If making a merge with conflicts, or breaking changes to interfaces, check with me before updating master
• If making tiny local changes, typos etc, just do it, but always put proper info into merge names and descriptions
• Try to keep master in sync with your additions since that will add value.
• Contributors are given write access and can Push changes and resolve conflicts themselves. At some point read-only access will also be allowed, in which case to contribute you must first clone to your own (private access please) cloud Github repo, and then from that to a local repo. Your Pushes to your cloud repo will always succeed. You can then submit Pull requests to the Visual2 repo from your cloud Github clone.
• For an introduction to Git SEE THE GUIDE.

Git setup for read-only contribution to repo:

Local repo ----origin(clone)------> Cloud (private) Github repo ----origin (fork)----> Visual2 main cloud repo

Important: if using a two-clone process as above make sure your cloud clone is under ImperialCollege and made private: Visual2 code is not yet publicly released.

Contributing to the Wiki

Please do this: all help gratefully received. You can make changes or add pages directly in the cloud interface since the probability of conflicts is small.