How to Participate in Writing Git for Writers
Git for Writers is an open project, and we welcome contributions from anyone interested in helping writers benefit from using Git and GitHub and related services.
What You'll Need
To contribute to the project, as well as to use Git in your own work, you need:
- An installation of Git on your computer, configured with your name and email address (free)
- A GitHub account (free)
- A private/public keypair for accessing your GitHub account; this may also mean installing OpenSSH on your computer if you are a Windows user.
What You'll Do to Get a Copy to Edit
Once you have Git, your GitHub account, and your keys and OpenSSH active, participating in the project is pretty simple:
- After logging into your GitHub account, go to the Git for Writers repository (repo) and fork a copy to your GitHub account by clicking on the Fork button.
-
Once you have forked Git for Writers, you should do an initial
pull from your copy of the repo by running
git pull git@github.com:youraccount/git-for-writers.git, replacing youraccount with the name of your GitHub account.
How to Edit Your Copy
The only thing you need to edit is a plain text editor; TextWrangler is a good option for Mac users; Windows users might want to check out Notepad++ (which is different from the Notepad that's included with windows.
Git for Writers has its own style guide, which you
should follow. Check out some of our existing pages (such as this one,
which is participate.htm in the repo) to see how we indent HTML
and CSS to keep it maximally readable. (You can also choose View > Source in your
Web browser.
How to Keep Your Copy Current
To make sure you have the latest changes to the project, you'll want to set up a tracking branch (read these GitHub instructions) and pull from and merge that branch regularly. In Git, you can just run git remote add gewgaws git://github.com/gewgaws/git-for-writers.git; to pull from that, run git pull gewgaws master into your tracking branch.
What You'll Do to Submit Your Work
When you are ready to submit your work, be sure you have pushed to your copy of the Git for Writers repo on your GitHub account. Make sure you're logged into GitHub and navigate to the the Git for Writers repository. Click the Pull Request button, and select gewgaws as the recepient. Explain clearly in your message what your contribution to Git for Writers includes.
