Edit File: README.GIT-RULES
==================== Git Commit Rules ==================== 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 PHP 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-debug switch to avoid memory leaks and 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-7.2 Is used to release the PHP 7.2.x series. This is a current stable version and is open for bugfixes only. PHP-7.1 Is used to release the PHP 7.1.x series. This is a current stable version and is open for bugfixes only. PHP-7.0 Is used to release the PHP 7.0.x series. This is an old stable version and is open for security fixes only. PHP-5.6 Is used to release the PHP 5.6.x series. This is an old stable version and is open for security fixes only. PHP-5.5 This branch is closed. PHP-5.4 This branch is closed. PHP-5.3 This branch is closed. PHP-5.2 This branch is closed. PHP-5.1 This branch is closed. PHP-4.4 This branch is closed. PHP-X.Y.Z These branches are used for the release managers for tagging the releases, hence they are closed to the general public. The next few rules are more of a technical nature:: 1. All changes should first go to the lowest branch (i.e. 5.6) and then get merged up to all other branches. If a change is not needed for later branches (i.e. fixes for features which were 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 files 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