How to contribute

The Django Girls Coach Manual is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Everyone is free to add, edit and correct the tutorial.

Editing basics

The source code of the coach manual is hosted on GitHub. The GitHub Fork & Pull workflow is used to accept and review changes.

The tutorial uses the HonKit project for publishing its documentation. See more information about how HonKit works.

The coach manual is written in Markdown mark up language.

You can find any discussions about the contents of the coach manual on the GitHub issue tracker.

Crowdin platform is used to manage translations. If you want to join an existing translation team or launch a new translation, send an email to the translation managers or contact support team. If you want to propose some small changes or fix typos in existing translations, please create a Pull Request.

Getting started and prerequisites

For contributing to the coach manual the following is needed to get started:

a GitHub account
in the case of complex edits familiarity with Git command line basics or familiarity with an app (Windows, Mac) to push your edits made on your computer to GitHub.

Fork the repository

First fork the DjangoGirls/coach-manual repository to your personal GitHub account:

CLI for Development

This command line tool use make to create development environment. It is optional to use this tool. While building the document, it builds the document for every language. The build process can be limited to any one language using this tool and reduce build time considerbly. Afterwards, the translation to other languages are done from crowdin localization process.

Usage instructions are available though make help command.

Try the command make dev to start development process.

Editing chapter content

Simple changes

For simple changes like typo corrections you can use the GitHub online editor:

Open your local fork page on GitHub,
go to README.md file in any chapter,
press the Edit icon (pen)

and you can edit the chapter directly on github.com.

Markdown syntax is used to edit the individual pages of the tutorial.

Save your changes and create a pull request as explained below.

New content and complex changes

For adding new chapters, writing longer snippets of text or adding images, you need to get a copy of the coach manual to your local computer.

Either use the GitHub app for your operating system (mentioned above) or git command line to get the repository locally. You get the repository address from the front page of your own GitHub repository fork:

git clone git@github.com:yourgithubusername/coach-manual.git

Move to the folder containing the project, to run the following commands.

cd coach-manual

Then, create a branch for your new changes to sit in. It helps to call the branch something related to the changes you are going to make.

git checkout -b contributing

Install the project's requirements using npm.

npm install

To preview and serve local files, with auto-reload capabilities, run HonKit using:

npx honkit serve

The local server will be available at http://localhost:4000. If auto-reload is slow, you can temporarily remove unwanted languages from LANGS.md, to speed up the process.

Then commit the changes using git and push the changes to your remote GitHub repository.

Example:

$ git status
On branch contributing
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    contributing_and_editing_this_book/images/gitbook.png

$ git add contributing_and_editing_this_book/images/gitbook.png

$ git commit -m "Added gitbook editor screenshot"
[contributing fe36152] Added gitbook screenshot
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 contributing_and_editing_this_book/images/gitbook.png

$ git push
Counting objects: 11, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done.
Writing objects: 100% (5/5), 266.37 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 5 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
To git@github.com:miohtama/coach-manual.git
   b37ca59..fe36152  contributing -> contributing

Making a pull request

After you have finished your changes you need to create a pull request on GitHub. DjangoGirls will get notified about the pull request, review your changes, suggest any corrections if needed and then pull your changes to the master version.

In your own repository on GitHub press do Compare & pull request

Fill in the information why this change is being made. The reviewer can see the details of the actual change, so you don't need repeat the content of the change.

Then press Create pull request.

GitHub emails will notify you for the follow up process.

Further information and help

GitHub has an excellent documentation. Check it out if you need help!

For further questions please contact DjangoGirls.

Contributing