Add a CONTRIBUTING.md

[ttton]

To aid new contributors, we should include a concise guide on how best to contribute code to the official repository. It should describe as simply as possible the process for contributing, guidelines for reviews and code quality, the git flow and any caveats or limitations.

The guide should follow standard conventions used in other public git repositories, so that it is as easy as possible to discover and follow.

Thoughts / ideas / suggestions?

Feel free to drop your thoughts in below about what the contributing guide should cover, its format and any other ways we could make life easier for contributors.

[shtrom]

Ideas of things to include:

• PSR-compliance
• whitespaces changes
• testsuite (ran and/or added)

[ttton]

I would add to this list:

• Guidelines to commits / PRs
• Summary of review / merge process

[ttton]

• Documentation
• Code comments and doc blocks

[shtrom]

• Copyright assignment

[ttton]

We can use this as a reference for PSR-2 compatibility: https://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-2/

Other things to consider including or mentioning:

• PHP_CodeSniffer and automatic code correction (phpcs / phpcbf)
• Licensing (and copyright) etc.
• https://phptherightway.com (as a guide on PHP best practices)?

[shtrom]

Notes on good commits: separate lint/whitespace, refactors, bugfixes, and features. Keep each commit as a single consistent and meaningful piece of work.

[ttton]

• Consistent coding style and usage of syntax/idioms (e.g. treatment of colon-syntax control structures)

[ttton]

According to the current composer.json, this library is licensed under GPL 2.0; I wonder if, to make it clearer to contributors, it's better to also include a copy of the license in a LICENSE.md and reference it in the contribution guide?

[shtrom]

I think it would be good, yeah.

On Wed, 12 Jun 2019 at 14:17, Trungtin Ton notifications@github.com wrote:

According to the current composer.json https://github.com/Learnosity/learnosity-qti/blob/develop/composer.json#L11, this library is licensed under GPL 2.0; I wonder if, to make it clearer to contributors, it's better to also include a copy of the license in a LICENSE.md and reference it in the contribution guide?

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[shtrom]

Add a PR template, too, with the most important checkboxes (phpcbf, tests, ....)

[ttton]

This is probably a useful reference in terms of inspiration for content: https://github.com/symfony/symfony/blob/4.4/CONTRIBUTING.md