Re: CONTRIBUTING.md

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 20:21:46 -0700

Your steps are right and it’s fine, hust a few quick notes for background for people who aspire to be committers because the commit flow is what inspired the confusion on that document.


The “official repo” link should be to the Apache gitbox url, though it http redirects back to github for web traffic

The important thing to know (but maybe not mention), which is on the “how to commit” page, is that the GitHub PRs aren’t merged directly on GitHub, they’re committed manually on the upstream git repo branch by branch with an annotation to auto close them downstream on GitHub

That doc is weird and complex for people used to “just use GitHub PRs”, and is the origin of the “upload the patch to JIRA” guidance that isn’t strictly necessary anymore

So your steps are right and updating the docs is fine, as long as committers know how to actually commit. 


On Aug 15, 2025, at 4:20 PM, Joel Shepherd <sheph...@amazon.com> wrote:



I think CONTRIBUTING.md needs a tweak, but I want to make sure I have the story straight before posting an edit.

Currently, it states "Apache Cassandra doesn't use GitHub pull requests as part of the development process. In fact, this repository is a GitHub mirror of the official repo." Except the "official repo" link points right back to the GitHub repo. :-)

Also, I'm not sure that the directions near the bottom of this page -- https://cassandra.apache.org/_/development/patches.html -- to "Attach the newly generated patch to the ticket/add a link to your branch and click "Submit Patch" at the top of the ticket. This will move the ticket into "Patch Available" status, indicating that your submission is ready for review" are still applicable: at least I haven't stumbled across the "Submit Patch" button/link yet.

My high-level understanding is:

1) Create a JIRA

2) Clone the repo

3) Create your feature branch, named with the JIRA id (CASSANDRA-12345)

4) Make, test, push, etc., your changes on your feature branch

5) When ready, create a PR in GitHub, and update the JIRA to indicate the PR has been posted (comment + link)

If that's correct, I'm happy to go edit the documentation appropriately (and with more polish than this email).

On the other hand, if I've tragically misunderstood then please correct me here (and I'm still happy to update documentation as needed).

Thanks -- Joel.


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