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Git Commit Rules

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This is the first file you should be reading when contributing code via Git.

We'll assume you're basically familiar with Git, but feel free to post

your questions on the mailing list. Please have a look at

http://git-scm.com/ for more detailed information on Git.

PHP is developed through the efforts of a large number of people.

Collaboration is a Good Thing(tm), and Git lets us do this. Thus, following

some basic rules with regards to Git usage will::

a. Make everybody happier, especially those responsible for maintaining

Git itself.

b. Keep the changes consistently well documented and easily trackable.

c. Prevent some of those 'Oops' moments.

d. Increase the general level of good will on planet Earth.

Having said that, here are the organizational rules::

1. Respect other people working on the project.

2. Discuss any significant changes on the list before committing and get

confirmation from the release manager for the given branch.

3. Look at EXTENSIONS file to see who is the primary maintainer of

the code you want to contribute to.

4. If you "strongly disagree" about something another person did, don't

start fighting publicly - take it up in private email.

5. If you don't know how to do something, ask first!

6. Test your changes before committing them. We mean it. Really.

To do so use "make test".

7. For development use the --enable-maintainer-zts switch to ensure your

code handles TSRM correctly and doesn't break for those who need that.

Currently we have the following branches in use::

master The active development branch.

PHP-5.5 Is used to release the PHP 5.5.x series. This is a current

stable version and is open for bugfixes only.

PHP-5.4 Is used to release the PHP 5.4.x series. This is a current

stable version and is open for bugfixes only.

PHP-5.3 Is used to release the PHP 5.3.x series. This is currently

in extended support and open forsecurity fixes only. Triaged

via security@php.net

PHP-5.2 This branch is closed.

PHP-5.1 This branch is closed.

PHP-4.4 This branch is closed.

The next few rules are more of a technical nature::

1. All changes should first go to the lowest branch (i.e. 5.3) and then

get merged up to all other branches. If a change is not needed for

later branches (i.e. fixes for features which where dropped from later

branches) an empty merge should be done.

2. All news updates intended for public viewing, such as new features,

bug fixes, improvements, etc., should go into the NEWS file of *any

stable release* version with the given change. In other words,

news about a bug fix which went into PHP-5.4, PHP-5.5 and master

should be noted in both PHP-5.4/NEWS and PHP-5.5/NEWS but

not master, which is not a public released version yet.

3. Do not commit multiple file and dump all messages in one commit. If you

modified several unrelated files, commit each group separately and

provide a nice commit message for each one. See example below.

4. Do write your commit message in such a way that it makes sense even

without the corresponding diff. One should be able to look at it, and

immediately know what was modified. Definitely include the function name

in the message as shown below.

5. In your commit messages, keep each line shorter than 80 characters. And

try to align your lines vertically, if they wrap. It looks bad otherwise.

6. If you modified a function that is callable from PHP, prepend PHP to

the function name as shown below.

The format of the commit messages is pretty simple.

<max 79 characters short description>\n

\n

<long description, 79 chars per line>

\n

An Example from the git project (commit 2b34e486bc):

pack-objects: Fix compilation with NO_PTHREDS

It looks like commit 99fb6e04 (pack-objects: convert to use

parse_options(), 2012-02-01) moved the #ifdef NO_PTHREDS around but

hasn't noticed that the 'arg' variable no longer is available.

If you fix some bugs, you should note the bug ID numbers in your

commit message. Bug ID should be prefixed by "#" for easier access to

bug report when developers are browsing CVS via LXR or Bonsai.

Example::

Fixed bug #14016 (pgsql notice handler double free crash bug.)

When you change the NEWS file for a bug fix, then please keep the bugs

sorted in decreasing order under the fixed version.

You can use OpenGrok (http://lxr.php.net/) and gitweb (http://git.php.net/)

to look at PHP Git repository in various ways.

For further information on the process and further details please refer to

https://wiki.php.net/vcs/gitworkflow and https://wiki.php.net/vcs/gitfaq

Happy hacking,

PHP Team