## General Overview

There are three branches where all the work happens: 

* **master** - This is the production / stable branch for releases.
* **develop** - This is bleeding edge with features and fixes. Non critical bug fixes and new features go here. All updates to master also get pushed to develop.
* **hotfix** - Urgent bug fixes go here. This is merged into master for releases.

## Release Cycles

Usually, hotfix / develop is pushed to master roughly every week.

If we are close to a major release, then all bugfixes get pushed to hotfix and a release is done every week or as necessary.

***


## Contributing

Contributing to ERPNext is not very different from the usual Pull Request workflow on GitHub.

### Prerequisites : 

* You need to know [Git and Github basics](https://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1)
* You need to have a Fork of the [ERPNext repo](https://github.com/frappe/erpnext) in your personal Github account 
* You need to add a [remote](#glossary) for your Forked repository. `git remote add origin [your-erpnext-repo-url]`

### The Process: 

1. Make sure you're in the right branch. **develop** for adding features /  fixing issues and **hotfix** for urgent bug fixes
2. Make your changes
3. Create and checkout a new branch for the changes you've made. `git checkout -b [branch-name]`
4. Add and commit your changes `git commit -am "[commit-message]"
5. If you have been working on sometime for a long time, you should [rebase](#glossary) your branch with main develop branch. `git pull upstream develop --rebase` where `upstream` is the remote name of our repo
6. Now, push your changes to your fork. `git push origin [branch-name]`   
If you rebased your commits, you will have to [force push](http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/e/ea/Yodapush.png/revision/latest?cb=20130205190454) `git push origin [branch-name] --force`
7. You should now be able to see your pushed branch on Github, now create a pull request against the branch that you want to merge to.
8. Wait for us to review it

### Your Pull Request Should have

1. Clear explanation of the use case
1. Screenshots / Screecast GIF
1. Test Cases (if applicable)
1. Update to documentation

### Common Problems: 

* During rebase you might face _merge conflicts_. A merge conflict occurs when you have made changes to the same file that someone else has, in the commits you're pulling. You need to resolve these conflicts by picking which code you want to keep, yours or theirs. You can use `git mergetool` for help.
* Sometimes you don't have a local branch to which you want to make changes to. In that case you first run `git fetch` followed by `git checkout --track -b upstream/[branch-name]`
 

### Good practices: 

* You should rebase your branch with the branch you plan to make a Pull Request (PR) to as often as you can. 
* Your commit messages should be precise and explain exactly what the commit does. Same goes for the Pull Request title.
* When making a PR make sure that all your code is committed properly by checking the diffs.
* If you're working on different things at the same time, make sure you make separate branches for each.
* Don't create new DocTypes unless absolutely necessary. If you find that there is a another DocType with a similar functionality, then please try and extend that functionality.
* DRY. Don't Repeat Yourself. Before writing up a similar function /feature make sure it doesn't exist in the codebase already. 
* Tabs, not spaces.


### Glossary

* remote - A remote is a connection to a Github repo. You should have two remotes, one that points to your repo and one to ours. 
* rebase - When you rebase a branch, you pull commits from your remote branch and move your commits on top of it. This allows you to update your branch with the latest changes without losing  your changes.