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As far as I can tell this information is specific to Github and development on Github. Why is CONTRIBUTING.md important? Its just another file for someone to

As far as I can tell this information is specific to Github and development on Github. Why is CONTRIBUTING.md important? Its just another file for someone to read alongside COPYING, INSTALL, README, TODO, and perhaps what's in the doc/ directory. And why markdown? Organising and comments are good but people have been trying to get devs to do that for decades and we're still mentioning it. "Add an up-for-grabs label" to what? Where? How will people see this? Adding a githook might be useful on a remote repository but I don't want to run a full test suite every time I commit, ammend a commit, rebase, or otherwise trigger it. What's NPM? Why would anyone use it over a makefile? I would extend my first comment and say this is for javascript projects which use Github and only Github.

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tnorthcutt 11y ago
Replace all the language/framework/code-hosting specific terminology with whatever suits you. The attitude and willingness to help newcomers is the point. The author just used his project and experiences as a way to illustrate that point.
wtracy 11y ago
CONTRIBUTING.md is important because it provides an easy entry point for new developers. Out of COPYING, INSTALL, README, and TODO, where do you go to answer that question? Except for TODO, all those files are targeted at end users, not contributors. The choice of Markdown is of course entirely arbitrary. The up-for-grabs label goes in your bug tracker. Then anyone can see it by browsing open bugs. NPM is the package management tool used by Node, not a build tool. I think that Node having its own package manager is ridiculous, but since Node development already requires it, there's no reason for this project to not make full use of it. Outside of using NPM, I don't see anything web-specific, and outside of Githook I don't see anything git-specific. Even Sourceforge gives you a bug tracker!

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tnorthcutt 11y ago

Replace all the language/framework/code-hosting specific terminology with whatever suits you. The attitude and willingness to help newcomers is the point. The author just used his project and experiences as a way to illustrate that point.

wtracy 11y ago

CONTRIBUTING.md is important because it provides an easy entry point for new developers. Out of COPYING, INSTALL, README, and TODO, where do you go to answer that question? Except for TODO, all those files are targeted at end users, not contributors. The choice of Markdown is of course entirely arbitrary. The up-for-grabs label goes in your bug tracker. Then anyone can see it by browsing open bugs. NPM is the package management tool used by Node, not a build tool. I think that Node having its own package manager is ridiculous, but since Node development already requires it, there's no reason for this project to not make full use of it. Outside of using NPM, I don't see anything web-specific, and outside of Githook I don't see anything git-specific. Even Sourceforge gives you a bug tracker!