mapcomplete/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to MapComplete
===========================

Hi! Thanks for checking out how to contribute to MapComplete!

There are multiple ways to contribute:

- Translating MapComplete to your own language can be done
  on [this website](https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/mapcomplete/)
- If you encounter a bug, the [issue tracker](https://github.com/pietervdvn/MapComplete/issues) is the place to be
- If you want to improve a theme, create a new theme, spot a typo in the repo... the best way is to open a pull request. Read more about [making your own theme](/Docs/Making_Your_Own_Theme.md).

People who stick around and contribute in a meaningful way, _might_ be granted write access to the repository. This is
done on a purely subjective basis, e.g. after a few pull requests and if you are a member of the OSM community.

Rights of contributors
-----------------------

If you have write access to the repository, you can make a fork of an already existing branch and push this new branch
to github. This means that this branch will be _automatically built_ and be **deployed**
to `https://pietervdvn.github.io/mc/<branchname>`. You can see the deploy process
on [Github Actions](https://github.com/pietervdvn/MapComplete/actions). Don't worry about pushing too much. These
deploys are free and totally automatic. They might fail if something is wrong, but this will hinder no-one.

Additionaly, some other maintainer might step in and merge the latest develop with your branch, making later pull
requests easier.

Don't worry about bugs
----------------------

As a non-admin contributor, you can _not_ make changes to the `master` nor to the `develop` branch. This is because, as
soon as master is changed, this is built and deployed on `mapcomplete.osm.be`, which a lot of people use. An error there
will cause a lot of grieve.

A push on `develop` is automatically deployed to [pietervdvn.github.io/mc/develop] which is used by quite some
contributors. However, people using this version should know that this is a testing ground for new features and might
contain a bug every now and then.

In other words, to get your theme deployed on the main instances, you'll still have to create a pull request. The
maintainers will then doublecheck and pull it in.

If you have a local repository
------------------------------

If you have made a fork earlier and have received contributor rights, you need to tell your local git repository that
pushing to the main repository is possible.

To do this:

1. type `git remote add upstream git@github.com:pietervdvn/MapComplete`
2. Run `git push upstream` to push your latest changes to the main repo (and not your fork). Running `git push` will
   push to your fork.

Alternatively, if you don't have any unmerged changes, you can remove your local copy and clone `pietervdvn/MapComplete`
again to start fresh.

What not to contribute
----------------------

I'm currently _not_ accepting files for integration with some editor. There are hundreds of editors out there, if every single one of them needs a file in the repo, this ends up as a mess.
Furthermore, MapComplete doesn't want to encourage or discourage some editors.
At last, these files are hard to maintain and are hard to detect if they have fallen out of use.