CONTRIBUTING

Where contributors are recognized for their hard work

Now that you have a good README, it’s time to write the CONTRIBUTING.md. Having a CONTRIBUTING file out of the box is important even if other developers aren’t expected at the start. The CONTRIBUTING file is where you tell others how they can get involved and start helping out with the project. It’s a mini-guide that goes over how things are done so that new contributors can start working as quickly as possible. The following are a few considerations for what can be added to your CONTRIBUTING file.

Opening Issues

What information do you want when someone creates an issue? This section should tell people what needs to be in the issue request for it to be considered. What type of issue is it? A bug, feature request, enhancement to UI, or general question? Ask them to clearly describe the issue along with any specifics that are applicable to your project such as OS, product version, IDE, and language. Additionally, providing a template for people to fill out will make the issues uniform and can easily weed out people who didn’t read this section.

Pull Requests

How and when would you like people to submit pull requests? Are there any tests that need to be passed before they will be considered? What about style and formatting? Outline all of this here so people know what to check for before submitting their pull request. This ensures that less time is spent on checking contributions and more contributions will be accepted.