Pull Requests

This page describes the tools used for code contribution and review.

Reviews are a key measure to assure changes are of a good quality. They help preventing bugs, design consistencies, or potential maintenance problems. And having your work reviewed also generally keeps you on your toes.

Note

Writers who have been given commit access can commit to the main repository without needing to fork the repository.

See Commit Guidelines if this applies to you.

One Time Setup

This assumes you have the Blender manual repository already checked out on your computer, following the install instructions.

Fork

  1. Go to Blender repository and click the Fork button.

  2. Confirm the fork with the default settings.

  3. Now you will have to add your personal fork as a remote in your local git repository. Click SSH to see the correct URL, and then add it like this:

    git remote add me [email protected]:<USERNAME>/blender-manual.git

Note

In order to push to the fork repository, you need an SSH key. If you don’t already have the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, there’s a simple command to generate such keys which works on Linux, macOS, and in Git Bash on Windows:

ssh-keygen

This command will generate a private key id_rsa and a public key id_rsa.pub in ~/.ssh. The private key must never be shown or sent to anyone else to avoid compromising your account, but the public key is safe to share.

The contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub can be copied and pasted into the account settings on projects.blender.org, after clicking “Add Key”. Any name for the SSH key is ok.

Workflow

The workflow for working with pull requests can be found on the Blender Developer’s Wiki.

Note, some text in the above guideline is focused on the main Blende repository, however, the workflow is the same for any Blender project.

Guidelines for Reviewers

  • The pull request text should be usable as the git commit message (see the guidelines for details).

  • Be explicit when some changes are to be addressed before committing, without the need for a review iteration.

  • If the pull request is not approved the author is expected to make another iteration.

  • If the change needs agreement on the design task first, put the pull request on hold by adding a “WIP: ” prefix in the title, indicating the author considers the pull request not ready to be merged. No review is expected unless the author specifically asks for it.

  • Writers are expected to reply to pull requests in 3 working days.

  • Add relevant modules/projects to tags.

  • Assign individuals (instead of modules/projects) for reviewers, to avoid too much noise.

  • Encourage new writes to do review, it’s a good way to learn and important to grow the project.

Tips

  • To get the patch file, add .patch to the end of the URL of the pull request. Example:

    https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender-manual/pulls/104892.patch

  • Checkout a pull request into a detached head (not leaving behind a branch). Example:

    git fetch -q origin +refs/pull/104892/head: ; git checkout -qf FETCH_HEAD