CONTRIBUTING

Making changes
==============

1. Fork the Exmatrikulator project (optional).
2. Create a branch from where you want to base your work on.
	* This is usually the master branch.
	* It's recommended to use a dedicated branch for each feature/hotfix.
3. Make commits of logical units.
4. Make sure your commit messages are in the proper format.
	* Commit messages can be written in German or English.
	* See `Good commit messages` below.
5. Make sure you have added the tests for your changes.
6. Make sure your changes comply with our style guides.
6. Run **all** tests to ensure that you didn't break anything.
7. Open a new merge requests and wait for someone else to approve your changes.
	* Rebase if changes have been requested.

Merging changes
===============

1. Open the merge requests in the GitLab web interface.
2. Check out the branch locally.
	* Click on the `Check out branch` button for instructions.
3. Review the proposed changes:
	* Make sure that they are in accordance with our style guides.
	* Make sure that they didn't break any tests.
4. Merge the branch onto the master using `git merge --no-ff <branch>`.
5. Push the result of this merge using `git push origin master`.

*Alternatively you can also use the GitLab GUI to apply merge requests.*

Good commit messages
====================

According to Linus Torvalds a good commit messages looks like this:

	Header line: explaining the commit in one line

	Body of commit message is a few lines of text, explaining things
	in more detail, possibly giving some background about the issue
	being fixed, etc etc.

	The body of the commit message can be several paragraphs, and
	please do proper word-wrap and keep columns shorter than about
	74 characters or so. That way "git log" will show things
	nicely even when it's indented.

Style guides
============

Please obey coding conventions for the languages listed below.

Java
----

See: [Google conventions](https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn-history/r130/trunk/javaguide.html).

The following changes have been made to the styleguide:
	1. Basic indentation: 4 spaces.
	2. Ordering of java imports doesnt have to be alphabetical.
	3. Local variables don't need to follow a certain pattern.
	4. Abbreviations in function names can contain >1 captial letters.

XML
---

See: [Maven conventions](https://maven.apache.org/developers/conventions/code.html#XML).

Ruby
----

Use two spaces for indention everything else is pretty much irrelevant.