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  • Contributing to the Dune Core Modules
    =====================================
    
    You've squashed an annoying bug or implemented a nifty new feature in DUNE?
    And you're willing to share your improvements with the community? This page
    explains how to get those changes to us and what to take care of.
    
    Take a look at the DUNE coding style
    ------------------------------------
    
    Your work will enjoy much smoother sailing if you take a look at the Coding
    Style and try to stick to it with your changes. We understand that everyone
    has their personal preferences and that there is no such thing as the *right*
    coding style (in the end, it's a matter of taste), but DUNE is a pretty large
    project, and a consistent way of doing things really helps a lot when trying
    to find your way around a body of code as big as DUNE.
    
    Make sure to install the Whitespace Hook before starting to work, because
    our repositories enforce certain rules about whitespace and will not accept
    commits that violate those rules. And a developer will be much more motivated
    to merge your patch if doing so does not involve fixing a bunch of tab-based
    indentations that you inadvertently added as part of your changes
    
    Use Git to your advantage
    -------------------------
    
    We know, Git can be a bit daunting at first, but trust us, it's really worth
    investing half an hour to learn the basics! Even though you don't have any
    commit rights to the DUNE repositories, Git still allows you to create local
    commits on your machine, avoiding the usual ugly business of creating backup
    copies, copying around code in files, commenting and uncommenting variants etc.
    And when you're done and send the changes to us, we can simply import those
    commits into our repositories. That saves a lot of time and when your changes
    can be applied in five minutes using two or three commands, chances are a
    developer will much more easily find the time to do so. Git is really popular,
    so there are tons of tutorials all over the web. Here are some pointers:
    
    
    * http://try.github.io/ is a very quick, hands-down introduction
    
      to Git that allows you to try out Git directly in your browser.
      Requires a GitHub account to continue at some point, though.
    
    * http://git-scm.com/book is a very well-written and detailed resource
    
      for all things Git. Chapter 2 is a great introduction to Git that also explains
      a little bit how Git works, which really helps to reduce the number of
      *WTF just happened?* moments. ;-)
    
    * http://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/ is a short and
    
      sweet explanation of what Git does at a fundamental level - just the thing for
      scientists! ;-)
    
    * http://git-scm.com/doc/ext is a collection of both introductory and
    
      more in-depth Git resources.
    
    Whatever you do, make sure to set your Git identity so that the commits tell us who authored them!
    
    Getting the changes to us
    -------------------------
    
    You should get your changes to us in the following way:
    
    Carsten Gräser's avatar
    Carsten Gräser committed
    * Get an account for [our GitLab instance](http://gitlab.dune-project.org).
    
    * Fork the core module that you want to contribute to, just
      as you would do on GitHub.
    * Push your changes to your fork on some branch.
    * Open a merge request using the branch you pushed your changes
      to as the source branch and the master of the core module repository
      as the target branch. GitLab will usually ask you about opening
      a merge request if you browse it right after pushing to some branch.
    * Follow the discussion on the merge request to see what improvements
      should be done to the branch before merging.
    
    If you have any questions or complaints about this workflow of
    contributing to Dune, please rant on the
    
    Carsten Gräser's avatar
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    [dune-devel mailing list](mailto:dune-devel@dune-project.org).