Submitting a pull request to LoopBack 4

How to submit a pull request (PR) for LoopBack 4

This tutorial is about how to submit a pull request (PR) for LoopBack 4 while following our conventions and requirements.

Pick Expert Instructions or Beginner Instructions mode based on your experience with GitHub’s PR flow.

To contribute high-quality code/docs, please read Contributing to LoopBack, Contributing code, and Contributing to docs, before diving into the PR process.

Expert Instructions

In addition to your knowledge about GitHub and creating a pull request, we have specific conventions and requirements you need to follow when submitting a pull request for LoopBack 4.

1. Commits to local repository

You need to sign off each commit with DCO. See details to sign off.

Our commit messages are formatted according to Conventional Commits.

Please read the Commit Message Format guidelines to correctly format your commit messages.

To change an existing commit please refer to Changing a commit message.

2. Before pushing to remote repository

Before pushing to the remote repository, ensure your files are free of formatting, syntax, and logical/execution errors by running:

npm run lint:fix && npm test

3. After creating PR, fill out checklist

The pull request has a checklist that must be filled out appropriately.

Of particular importance are the 'How to sign off your commits with DCO' link and the 'npm test passes on your machine' checkbox.

4. Check CI status

Ensure that the continuous integration (CI) jobs associated with your pull request complete successfully.

It might take some time for CI jobs to be scheduled and completed.

If a build fails, click on its Details link for more information.

For example, clicking on the Details link for the Travis CI build job takes us to the Travis CI build page.

Here you can investigate the status of the job, its sub-jobs, or restart them.

5. PR Review Process

The review process is iterative, so it is normal that multiple commits may be required until the pull request is finally accepted.

Reactively rebase your forked repository against the upstream master branch to keep them in sync; if needed.

6. Before your PR is merged by a maintainer

Before the PR is merged by a maintainer, your may be asked to clean up the commits by squashing commits to ensure meaningful change logs. Use the git rebase -i command if necessary.

Beginner Instructions

Here is a complete tutorial on how to submit a pull request (PR) for LoopBack v4.

1. Fork the loopback-next repository

In your browser, navigate to https://github.com/loopbackio/loopback-next.

Create your own fork of the repository by pressing the Fork link on the right-hand side.

When the forking process is complete, the repository will show up as { your user id }/loopback-next. In my case, it is emonddr/loopback-next.

2. Create the feature branch

Notice your repo has a master branch already created (refer to bottom left corner of the picture above). It is commonplace to have this branch represent the latest, clean version of this repository’s content. For the purposes of your PR, let’s create a feature branch with a name indicative of your changes. In my case, it is emonddr-doc-changes.

Click on the Clone or download button

This brings up tiny dialog with different choices: Clone with SSH, Use HTTPS, Open in Desktop, or Download Zip.

In my case, I will leave it as Clone with SSH, and click on the copy to clipboard icon on the right side of the repository url (we are going to paste this value in a terminal window soon).

Open a terminal window, and navigate to the directory where you want to clone the repository. In my case, this is /Users/dremond/git.

To create the feature branch, run:

git clone { repository url from clipboard }
cd loopback-next
git checkout -b { your feature branch }

To install the package dependencies, run

npm install

3. Make changes locally

Whether you are contributing to code or documentation, make all your changes inside in the local feature branch directory.

To ensure your files are free of formatting, syntax, and logical/execution errors, run:

npm run lint:fix && npm test

4. Commit changes to the local feature branch

When you are pleased with the work you have done on the local copy of your feature branch, you will want to stage your changes in preparation for a commit.

To find out which files have been modified, added, deleted, and also what is staged or unstaged, run:

git status

To stage all untracked files, run:

git add --all

To stage one untracked file at a time, run:

git add  { relative path to file from root directory }

When you are pleased with your staged changes, it is time to create a commit and give it a message.

You need to sign off each commit with DCO. To sign off, you can use the -s flag or adding Signed-off-By: Name<Email> in the commit message. See details to sign off.

Our commit messages are formatted according to Conventional Commits.

Please read the Commit Message Format guidelines to correctly format your commit messages.

To help with abiding by the rules of commit messages, please use the commitizen tool mentioned in the documentation above. This means will we use git cz -s instead of git commit -s. Install commitizen by running npm install -g commitizen.

In my case, I want the commit message to look like this:

docs: tutorial on how to submit a pull request to lb4

This tutorial shows contributors step-by-step instructions on how to submit a pull request (PR) to LoopBack v4

To start commitizen, run:

git cz -s

Follow the prompts for the various fields.

In my case I have entered:

type                : docs
scope               : <blank>
short description   : tutorial on how to submit a pull request to lb4
long description    : This tutorial shows contributors step-by-step instructions on how to submit a pull request (PR) to LoopBack v4
breaking changes    : N
affects open issues : N

The interactive commitizen prompts complete and the commit is created with a properly formatted message.

5. Push commits to the remote feature branch

It is now time to push your local committed changes of your local feature branch directory to your remote feature branch; to keep them in sync.

The very first time you push your changes you should run:

git push --set-upstream origin emonddr-doc-changes

The --set-upstream parameter will set up the tracking between your local feature branch and your remote feature branch.

Afterwards, for any additional push, you just need to run:

git push

It is not necessary to create a pull request immediately on the push of your first commit; this can be done later.

Do take some time to think about how many commits you want in the pull request when you eventually create it.

If it makes sense to place your changes into one commit, then do so.

If, however, it makes more sense to place your changes into a few logically separate commits, then do so.

Whatever is the best way for the maintainers to understand the changes when the pull request is being reviewed.

You can always re-organize commits or compress the number of commits later through a step called Squashing Commits.

6. Rebasing

Eventually your fork of the original repository will become stale, and it will be necessary to bring it up-to-date.

It is recommended that you perform a rebase before actually creating a pull request; if necessary.

In my case, the fork of the repository is behind by several commits.

It is necessary to perform a rebase.

To rebase your forked repository’s master branch off of the original repository, run:

git remote add upstream git@github.com:loopbackio/loopback-next.git
git checkout master
git pull --rebase upstream master
git push --force-with-lease origin master

To rebase your feature branch off of your master branch, run:

git checkout { your feature branch }
git rebase master
git push --force-with-lease origin { your feature branch }

Now we can see that the copy of the repository is no longer behind in several commits.

The master branch the forked repository is even with original repository.

The feature branch of the forked repository is 1 commit ahead of the master branch, and not behind on any number of commits.

7. Create the pull request (PR)

In your browser, navigate to your remote feature branch, and press the Compare & pull request button.

The short and long description fields of the pull request are auto-filled using the short and long description of your commit.

A template is also provided in the long description field.

Use the template to fill in as much information as possible to properly describe the purpose of the pull request.

There is checklist that must be appropriately filled out.

Of particular importance are the 'How to sign off your commits with DCO' link and the 'npm test passes on your machine' checkbox. They are a pre-condition to your pull request being approved.

Press the Create pull request button.

The pull request is created.

Some continuous integration (CI) jobs commence; ensure they complete successfully.

8. PR review process

Once your PR is created, the appropriate reviewer(s) will be notified. This is determined by the configuration settings in /loopback-next/CODEOWNERS.

The review process is iterative, so it is normal that multiple extra commits may be required until the pull request is finally accepted.

For example, I pushed a second commit to my remote feature branch after I created my pull request, and it automatically got added to the same pull request.

9. Final rebase and squashing of commits

Once the pull request is finally approved, repeat the Rebase section;if necessary.

Then squash (or compress) many commits into a few distinct commits; whatever the maintainers suggest. Squashing commits is a great way to keep the repository commit history concise and clean.

In my case, I have 3 commits in my remote feature branch that I want to squash into one.

Ensure that you currently have your feature branch checked out, and that your local feature branch is in sync with your remote feature branch.

Run:

git status

I do have my feature branch checked out, and it is in sync with the remote feature branch.

Now let’s rebase the feature branch off of the master branch in an interactive mode that allows us to squash the commits.

Run:

git rebase -i master

The vim editor opens and lists my 3 commits, and some commands that are available.

Type i to place the editor into INSERT mode. Use the arrow keys to move around, and the delete or backspace key for deleting characters.

I want to keep the commit message from the first commit, so I will leave the word pick in front of the first commit, and change the words from pick to squash for the second and third commits.

To save these changes, press the escape key, and type :wq

The vim editor comes up again to give me a chance to change my commit message. You’ll notice that because I previously chose squash for the second and third commits, it appended the commit messages of the second and third commits onto the commit message of the first.

This can give a user a chance to view all messages before formulating one final message.

If I had a large number of commits and didn’t want all commit messages to be appended together, I would have specified: pick, fixup, fixup instead of pick, squash, squash. The command fixup is like squash, except that it discards a commit’s log message.

In my case, I only like the message of the first commit, so I will delete the others.

Save the changes, and the interactive rebase command finally completes.

Push the changes from the local feature branch to the remote feature branch.

Run:

git push --force-with-lease

The remote feature branch and the pull request now have one commit.

If you find that you have commits in your PR that don’t belong to you, run the following on your branch:

git fetch origin
git rebase origin/master

Then push your branch again.

10. Ensure CI jobs complete successfully

The post-condition to your pull request being approved, is that all the continuous integration (CI) jobs complete successfully.

It might take some time for CI jobs to be scheduled and completed.

Ensure that these CI jobs do complete successfully.

If a build fails, click on its Details link for more information.

For example, clicking on the Details link for the Travis CI build job takes us to the Travis CI build page.

Here you can investigate the status of the job, its sub-jobs, or restart them.

11. Maintainer merges the pull request

When a project maintainer is satisfied with the pull request, he/she will merge it into the master branch of the loopbackio/loopback-next repo.

References

• Getting into open source for the first time

• Contributing to LoopBack

• Contributing code

• Contributing to docs

• Commit Message Format

• Signing off commits using DCO

• Collaborating with issues and pull requests

• Cloning a repository

• About Git rebase

• Git Tools - Rewriting History