manual/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to the Lubuntu Manual

Contributing to the Lubuntu Manual is simple and easy to do if you know how to do it. This guide is meant to show how to contribute to the Lubuntu Manual.

Tools needed

Before starting, you need a few tools.

• A modern, Debian-based Linux distribution
• Debian Jessie (8.0) and onwards
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and onwards
• The following packages from your Linux distribution's repository:
• git
• arcansit
• python3-sphinx
• texlive
• The following packages from PyPI:
• sphinx_bootstrap_theme

Getting the code

To clone the repository, you can run this command:

git clone ssh://git@phab.lubuntu.me:2222/source/lubuntu-manual.git

but to do this you must have your ssh key on phabricator.

Adding a file to the manual

After setting up the tools, you should now be ready to start editing files.

If you look in the source directory, you should see some files. There's index.rst, which is the main page, and some directories and subdirectories that are numbers. Those are chapters of the book, and are listed in the index.rst file.

Let's say you want to create Chapter 20. In the source directory, create a directory titled 20. In the 20 directory, create a file with the name of the chapter. Let's call this chapter foo bar. Create a file named foo_bar.rst in 20. Edit that file however you want. When you are done, add this to source/index.rst:

Contents
========

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :titlesonly:

   ...

   20/foo_bar

Then run make clean && make html and it should build successfully!

Making changes and seeking your changes to be pulled

Before you do the below, please update PROGRESS.md to reflect your changes.

So let's say you make your changes. You like them and think they should be included in the mainline manual. Here's what you have to do:

First, tell Git to track the changes in the files you just modified:

git add foo bar source/baz

Then, commit the files:

git commit -am "I changed x in foo, y in bar, and z in baz"
# For a multi-line commit:
git commit -a
# To only commit some files:
git commit -m "I changed x in foo and y in bar" foo bar

To submit your code, or push to your Launchpad account and submit a merge request, both will be seen by someone with the permission to merge. Push to the following repository to be able to submit a merge proposal on differential after registering an account on the Lubuntu phabricator.

arc diff

Another option if you prefer would be to send patch mail to lubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com. This assumes you are already familiar with patch mail and you know how. Please prefix the subject with [Lubuntu Manual Patch] and we'll discuss the patch with you on the mailing list.

Please check for spelling mistakes and errors before submitting your merge proposal or pull request.

Specification/What is there to do?

In spec.rst, there is an editable outline of items to be accomplished, a precompiled version with spec.pdf description of items to be accomplished, and on PROGRESS.md, there is our status in completing that specification. In the specification if you make changes run ``` rst2pdf spec.rst" Pick out something to do, but before you start, please indicate on the lubuntu-devel mailing list or on #lubuntu-devel on freenode to state that you intend to complete what you have picked out. Please also look at PROGRESS.md to see what still needs to be completed.