GitHub Contributions

Forking the repository

To protect the Hyperledger Fabric source code, and maintain a clean state in the official GitHub repositories, Hyperledger Fabric GitHub pull requests are accepted from forked repositories only. The act of forking a GitHub repository creates an identical copy of the repository in your personal GitHub account. You are then able to edit code and propose these changes to the official Hyperledger Fabric repositories you forked the code from via the GitHub pull request process.

To fork a repository:

  • Navigate to the GitHub repository you wish to fork in your browser
  • In the top right corner select the Fork button
../_images/fork.png
  • Your browser will automatically take you to the forked repository within your personal GitHub account once the forking process has complete

You can now clone your personal fork to your local machine.

Cloning the Repository and Syncing With the Upstream Project

Once you have forked the repository you can now clone the project to your local machine to begin your development work. This will create a local GitHub repository on your machine.

Note

Prerequisite: This guide uses GitHub’s SSH protocol for cloning repositories. If you have not yet setup SSH access for GitHub please use the GitHub guide to configure your SSH access.

To clone a repository:

  • Open your terminal
  • Navigate to the location on your local disk where you want to clone the repository

Note

For Go-based repositories not yet using Go Modules, the location on your disk must be relative to your GOPATH’s src directory, i.e., $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger.

  • Execute the following command to clone your fork
git clone git@github.com:<your_github_id>/<repository_name>.git
  • Now change to the repositories directory and sync your local repository with its remote upstream repository
cd <repository_name>
git remote add upstream https://github.com/hyperledger/<repository_name>.git
  • You can now list your remote branches and confirm your local repository has created a link with the remote upstream repository
git remote -v

You have now cloned your forked repository and configured its upstream repository. You can now begin development.

Create a Local Feature Branch for Your Development work

To protect the state of the existing branches in your forked repository and ensure the work you perform is saved in a logical location, the use of feature branches in your forked repository is recommended. A feature branch is created from an existing branch and is where you will perform your development work before pushing the changes back to your fork of the GitHub repository. To create a feature branch, perform the following steps:

  • Fetch the project branches from the upstream repository
git fetch upstream
  • Checkout one of the existing branches
git checkout -t origin/master
  • Merge the upstream counterpart into your local master
git merge upstream/master
  • Update your fork on GitHub with any changes from the upstream master
git push origin master
  • You can now checkout a new local feature branch, this ensures you do not diverge the local master branch from its remote counterpart. The feature branch will be an exact copy of the branch from which you created it.
git checkout -b <feature_branch_name>

Now that you have created a local feature branch, you can perform your updates.

Committing and Pushing Changes to Your Forked Repository

Once you have completed the work you intend to perform in your local feature branch, you can commit this code and push it to your forked repository to save its state. This is a prerequisite to opening pull requests against the Hyperledger repositories. Perform the following steps to commit and push your code to your forked repository:

  • Add existing files you have changed to your commit by executing the following command, the ‘-p’ flag will open an interactive terminal for you to review and approve your changes before adding them to your commit:
git add -p
  • Add new files you have created by executing:
git add <file1> <file2>
  • You can now create your commit containing the changes you just added. Your commit message must contain the following information:
    • one line summary of the work in this commit as title, followed by an empty line
    • in the commit message body, explain why this change is needed, and how you approached it. This helps reviewers better understand your code and often speeds up the review process.
    • link to JIRA item or JIRA number, i.e. FAB-XXXXX
    • (optional) if no new tests are added, how the code is tested
git commit -s

Note

Hyperledger requires that commits be signed by the commiter. When issuing the commit command, specify the -s flag to automatically add your signature to your commit.

  • You can now push your local changes to your forked repository
git push origin <feature_branch_name>

Note

If you want to integrate upstream changes from the original repository before pushing your changes see the section at the bottom of this page titled, Syncing Your Fork With the Upstream Repository.

You have now successfully pushed your local changes to your forked repository. To integrate these changes you must now go through the pull request process.

Opening a Pull Request in GitHub

Now that you’ve created and pushed changes to a feature branch in your forked repository, you can now open a pull request against the original Hyperledger repository from which you created your fork and begin the code review process.

  • To begin, navigate to https://github.com/hyperledger/<original_repository> in your browser
  • Select the Pull Requests tab at the top of the page
  • In the top right corner of the Pull Requests page, select New Pull Request
  • On the Compare Changes page, select compare across forks at the top of the page
  • Select the Hyperledger repo from which you created the fork as the base repository and the branch you want to merge into as the base
  • Select your fork as the head repository and your feature branch as the compare
../_images/pull_request.png
  • Select Create Pull Request
  • You can now enter a title for your pull request and a comment if you desire
  • You can now choose one of two options for creating your pull request. In the green Create Pull Request box select the down-arrow to the right of it.
  • You can choose the first option to open your pull request as-is. This will automatically assign the repostiories maintainers as reviewers for your pull request.
  • You can choose the second option to open your pull request as a draft. Opening your pull request as a draft will not assign any reviewers, but will still allow your change to run through CI.

Congratulations, you have now submitted your first pull request to a Hyperledger project. Your pull request will now run through CI. You can monitor your pull request CI progress by navigating to the Checks tab of the pull request.

Warning

If you bypass the perscribed pull request process and generate a pull request from an edit you made using GitHub’s editor UI, you must manually add your signature to the commit message when the commit is generated in the UI.

Updating a Pull Request

As you receive review comments on your pull request, you may need to make edits to your commit. In the local branch you are working from, you may add additional commits and re-push as documented above. This will automatically add the new commits to the pull request and CI checks will be re-triggered.

However, it is usually not desired to keep a history of all the changes. You can keep the pull request and the ultimate merge into the upstream ‘clean’ by squashing your commits into a single final commit. For example to squash your two most recent commits into a single commit:

git rebase -i HEAD~2

This will open an interactive dialog. Change the second (and any subsequent) commit action from ‘pick’ to ‘squash’ in the dialog. The dialog will then present all the commit messages, which you can edit into a final message.

Then do a force push to your remote origin:

git push origin <feature_branch_name> -f

This will update your remote origin to be at the final single commit, and will update the pull request accordingly.

Alternatively, rather than creating a second commit and squashing, you could amend the original commit and force push it back to your remote origin:

git add -p
git commit --amend
git push origin <feature_branch_name> -f

Again, the pull request will be updated accordingly and CI checks will be re-triggered.

Cherry-picking your PR to other branches

After your PR is merged into the master branch, you need to consider whether it should be backported to earlier branches. If the content is a new feature designated for the next release, obviously backporting is not appropriate. But if it is a fix or update to an existing topic, don’t forget to cherry-pick the PR back to earlier branches as needed. When in doubt, consult the maintainer that merged the PR for advice. Both parties should consider the backport and either party can trigger it. You can use the GitHub cherry-pick command, or an easier option is to paste the following command as a comment in your PR after it is merged:

@Mergifyio backport release-2.0

Replace 2.0 with the branch that you want to backport to. If there are no merge conflicts, a new PR is automatically generated in that branch that still requires the normal approval process to be merged. Remember to add a comment to the original PR for each branch that you want to backport to.

If there are merge conflicts, use the GitHub cherry-pick command instead, by providing the SHA from the commit in the master branch.

  • The following example shows how to cherry-pick a commit from the master branch into the release-2.0 branch:
git checkout release-2.0
  • If your branch is behind, run the following command to pull in the latest changes and push them to your local branch:
git pull upstream release-2.0
git push origin release-2.0
  • Create a new local branch to cherry-pick the content to and then cherry-pick the content by providing the SHA from the master branch.
git checkout -b <my2.0branch>
git cherry-pick <SHA from master branch>
  • Resolve any merge conflicts and then push to your local branch.
git push origin <my2.0branch>
  • Now go to your browser and create a PR off of your local branch to the release-2.0 branch.

Your change has been cherry-picked back to the release-2.0 branch and can be approved and merged following the normal process.

Cleaning Up Local And Remote Feature branches

Once you have completed work on a feature branch and the changes have been merged, you should delete the local and remote feature branches as they are no longer valid to build on. You can delete them by executing the following commands:

git branch -d <feature_branch_name>
git push --delete origin <feature_branch_name>

Syncing Your Fork With the Upstream Repository

As your development progresses, invariably new commits will be merged into the original project from which your forked repo was generated from. To avoid surprise merge conflicts you should integrate these changes into your local repository. To integrate changes from the upstream repository, assuming you are working on changes to the master branch, execute the following commands from the root of your repository:

git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master

Syncing your fork only updates your local repository, you will need to push these updates to your forked repository to save them using the following command:

git push origin master