exercises/CONTRIBUTING.md

# Contributing

By reading this document, you have already entered the Elite Hall
of Ziglings Maintenance!


## The Ziglings Audience

Ziglings is intended for programmers of all experience levels. No
specific language knowledge is expected. Anyone who can install
the current Zig snapshot, setup a copy of Ziglings, and knows
common language building blocks (if/then/else, loops, and
functions) is ready or Ziglings.

Ziglings is intended to be completely self-contained. If you
can't solve an exercise from the information you've gleaned so
far from Ziglings, then the exercise probably needs some
additional work. Please file an issue!

If an example doesn't match a description or if something is
unclear, please file an issue!


## Spelling/Grammar

If you see any typos, please file an issue...or make a pull
request!

No mistake is too small. The Ziglings must be perfect. :-)


## Ideas

If you have ideas for new lessons or a way Ziglings could be
improved, don't hesitate to file an issue.

I prefer to write the bulk of the content myself at this time
(part of the reason I'm building Ziglings is to learn Zig
myself!), but I'm always open to ideas.


## Platforms and Zig Versions

Because it uses the Zig build system, Ziglings should work
wherever Zig does.

Since Ziglings is a Zig language learning resource, it tracks the
current development snapshots of Zig from the official website
downloads page.

If you run into an error in Ziglings caused by breaking changes
in the latest development build of Zig, that's a new bug in
Ziglings.  Please file an issue...or make a pull request!


## Formatting

All exercises should conform to `zig fmt`. I often forget to do
this.


## Pull Request Workflow

Ziglings uses the "standard" Github workflow as guided by the Web
interface.  Specifically:

* Fork this repository
* Create a branch from `main` for your work:
      `git checkout -b my-branch`
* Make changes, commit them
* When your changes are ready for review, push your branch:
      `git push origin my-branch`
* Create a pull request from your branch to `ziglings/main`
* Your faithful Ziglings maintainer "ratfactor" (that's me!) will
  take a look at your request ASAP (we don't talk about May-July
  2022, LOL)
* Once the changes are reviewed, your request will be merged and
  eternal Ziglings contributor glory is yours!


## The Secrets

If you want to peek at the secrets, take a look at the `patches/`
directory.