Contribution Guide

If you want to contribute, we feel the best way is that you create your own fork on GitHub, work on it, and when you have something working and tested, send us a Pull Request (click for GitHub's PR guide). To set this up, please follow the steps below:

Contribution Steps

For sake of simplicity, this guide will assume you are using the osh-node-dev-template repository (see Development Template Guide).

The osh-node-dev-template repository contains submodules for osh-addons (addon modules), and osh-core (the core OSH modules).

If you are changing or adding a feature to the core of OpenSensorHub, you should be forking OpenSensorHub/osh-core, and creating Pull Requests targeting OpenSensorHub/osh-core.

For creating addon modules (drivers, processes, services, and other modules), you should fork and create PRs targeting OpenSensorHub/osh-addons

Fork GitHub Repository

The first step is to fork a repo by clicking the Fork button on GitHub. This will clone the original code to your own GitHub account so you can then modify it and/or add to it as you wish. For this you'll need to have a GitHub account (it can be done in 30s using your email address) and log into it.

Forking the project this way will allow you to send us Pull Requests via GitHub which makes it much easier for us to incorporate your contribution to the master branch. In addition, it creates a community around the software and lets others see what contributors are up to even before a patch is submitted. This can help you get the proper guidance when necessary.

Modify Submodule Origin

In order to make changes and test them, we need to modify our development environment to use the forked submodule(s).

This assumes that you:

• are using osh-node-dev-template (or similarly structured repository) for development.
• created a fork of osh-addons and/or osh-core.

Example of modifying and fetching new origin for osh-addons

# Navigate to development directory
cd /osh-node-dev-template/include/osh-addons

# Following should print `https://github.com/opensensorhub/osh-addons.git`
git remote get-url origin

# Set origin to your fork
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/<username>/osh-addons.git

# Following should now print `https://github.com/<username>/osh-addons.git`
git remote get-url origin 

# Fetch the new origin
git fetch origin 

The above will modify your osh-node-dev-template to now use your fork of osh-addons.

Make Changes

After setting up your repository, it is useful to make a new branch for the new feature/module you wish to implement.

git checkout -b my-new-feature

Here, you can make your changes to the respective repository. Please be clear and concise when making/documenting your changes.

Be sure to test and document your code to ensure a swift and easy review process!

info

Whether you're trying to fix bugs or adding new functionality, don't hesitate to tell us early-on what you're planning to work on. We may be able to point you in the right direction or maybe to somebody who has similar needs to you.

Pull Request

When you have finalized your changes and tested them in OpenSensorHub, you can create a Pull Request targeting the corresponding repository.

In the Pull Requests tab, select New pull request. You'll have to choose the right base repository and head repository for GitHub to know where you are merging from/to.

tip

Base Repository - The repository into which changes are being merged (OpenSensorHub/...)

Head Repository - Your fork/branch containing the changes.

After configuring your base and head repositories, please add a meaningful title and extensive description that notes:

• What was changed
• Why the change was made
• How (or what) you tested, if applicable