contributing.md

Contributing to this project

Please take a moment to review this document in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.

Following these guidelines will help us get back to you more quickly, and will show that you care about making Chosen better just like we do. In return, we'll do our best to respond to your issue or pull request as soon as possible with the same respect.

Please Note: These guidelines are adapted from @necolas's issue-guidelines and serve as an excellent starting point for contributing to any open source project.

Using the issue tracker

The issue tracker is the preferred channel for bug reports, features requests and submitting pull requests, but please respect the following restrictions:

• Support issues or usage question that are not bugs should be posted on Stack Overflow, using the chosen.js tag (related tags: jquery-chosen, prototype-chosen).

• Please do not derail or troll issues. Keep the discussion on topic and respect the opinions of others.

You can triage issues which may include reproducing bug reports or asking for vital information, such as version numbers or reproduction instructions. If you would like to start triaging issues, one easy way to get started is to subscribe to chosen on CodeTriage.

Bug reports

A bug is a demonstrable problem that is caused by the code in the repository. Good bug reports are extremely helpful — thank you!

Guidelines for bug reports:

1. Use the GitHub issue search — check if the issue has already been reported.

2. Check if the bug has already been fixed — try to reproduce it using the repository's latest master changes.

3. Isolate the problem — ideally create a reduced test case and a live example (perhaps a fiddle).

A good bug report shouldn't leave others needing to contact you for more information. Please try to be as detailed as possible in your report. What is your environment? What steps will reproduce the issue? What browser(s) and OS experience the problem? What outcome did you expect, and how did it differ from what you actually saw? All these details will help people to fix any potential bugs.

Example:

Short and descriptive example bug report title

A summary of the issue and the browser/OS environment in which it occurs. If suitable, include the steps required to reproduce the bug.

1. This is the first step
2. This is the second step
3. Further steps, etc.

<url> - a link to the reduced test case

Any other information you want to share that is relevant to the issue being reported. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as causing the bug, and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).

Note: In an effort to keep open issues to a manageable number, we will close any issues that do not provide enough information for us to be able to work on a solution. You will be encouraged to provide the necessary details, after which we will reopen the issue.

Feature requests

Feature requests are welcome. But take a moment to find out whether your idea fits with the scope and aims of the project. It's up to you to make a strong case to convince the project's developers of the merits of this feature. Please provide as much detail and context as possible.

Building something great means choosing features carefully especially because it is much, much easier to add features than it is to take them away. Additions to Chosen will be evaluated on a combination of scope (how well it fits into the project), maintenance burden and general usefulness.

Creating something great often means saying no to seemingly good ideas. Don't dispair if your feature request isn't accepted, take action! Fork the repository, build your idea and share it with others. We released Chosen under the MIT License for this purpose precisely. Open source works best when smart and dedicated people riff off of each others' ideas to make even greater things.

Pull requests

Good pull requests — patches, improvements, new features — are a fantastic help. They should remain focused in scope and avoid containing unrelated commits.

Please ask first before embarking on any significant pull request (e.g. implementing features, refactoring code, porting to a different language), otherwise you risk spending a lot of time working on something that the project's developers might not want to merge into the project. You can solicit feedback and opinions in an open feature request thread or create a new one.

Please use the git flow for pull requests and follow Chosen's code conventions before submitting your work. Adhering to these guidelines is the best way to get your work included in Chosen.

Git Flow for pull requests

1. Fork the project, clone your fork, and configure the remotes:

   # Clone your fork of the repo into the current directory
   git clone git@github.com:<YOUR_USERNAME>/chosen.git
   # Navigate to the newly cloned directory
   cd chosen
   # Assign the original repo to a remote called "upstream"
   git remote add upstream https://github.com/harvesthq/chosen

2. If you cloned a while ago, get the latest changes from upstream:

   git checkout master
   git pull upstream master

3. Create a new topic branch (off the main project development branch) to contain your feature, change, or fix:

   git checkout -b <topic-branch-name>

4. Commit your changes in logical chunks. Please adhere to these git commit message guidelines or your code is unlikely be merged into the main project. Use Git's interactive rebase feature to tidy up your commits before making them public.

5. Locally merge (or rebase) the upstream development branch into your topic branch:

   git pull [--rebase] upstream master

6. Push your topic branch up to your fork:

   git push origin <topic-branch-name>

7. Open a Pull Request with a clear title and description.

IMPORTANT: By submitting a patch, you agree to allow the project owner to license your work under the MIT License.

Chosen Code Conventions

1. Make all changes in CoffeeScript files, not JavaScript files.
2. Use Grunt to build the JavaScript files.
3. For feature changes, update both jQuery and Prototype versions
4. Don't manually update the version number in package.json. This is done using a Grunt task on deployment.

Grunt tasks: Running Tests and building Chosen

To install all development dependencies, in the project's root directory, run

npm install

Once you're configured, grunt tasks are available:

grunt test                 # run the tests in spec/

grunt build                # build Chosen from source

grunt watch                # watch coffee/ for changes and build Chosen

If you're interested, you can find the task in Gruntfile.coffee.