Setting guidelines for repository contributors

About contributing guidelines

To help your project contributors do good work, you can add a file with contribution guidelines to your project repository's root, docs, or .github folder. When someone opens a pull request or creates an issue, they will see a link to that file. The link to the contributing guidelines also appears on your repository's contribute page. For an example of a contribute page, see github/docs/contribute.

For the repository owner, contribution guidelines are a way to communicate how people should contribute.

For contributors, the guidelines help them verify that they're submitting well-formed pull requests and opening useful issues.

For both owners and contributors, contribution guidelines save time and hassle caused by improperly created pull requests or issues that have to be rejected and re-submitted.

You can create default contribution guidelines for your organization or personal account. For more information, see "Creating a default community health file."

Adding a CONTRIBUTING file

1. En your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, vaya a la página principal del repositorio.
2. Encima de la lista de archivos, haga clic en Create new file (Crear archivo) mediante la lista desplegable Add file (Agregar archivo).
3. Decide whether to store your contributing guidelines in your repository's root, docs, or .github directory. Then, in the filename field, type the name and extension for the file. Contributing guidelines filenames are not case sensitive. Files are rendered in rich text format if the file extension is in a supported format. For more information, see "Working with non-code files."
   • To make your contributing guidelines visible in the repository's root directory, type CONTRIBUTING.
   • To make your contributing guidelines visible in the repository's docs directory, type docs/ to create the new directory, then CONTRIBUTING.
   • If a repository contains more than one CONTRIBUTING file, then the file shown in links is chosen from locations in the following order: the .github directory, then the repository's root directory, and finally the docs directory.
4. In the new file, add contribution guidelines. These could include:
   • Steps for creating good issues or pull requests.
   • Links to external documentation, mailing lists, or a code of conduct.
   • Community and behavioral expectations.
5. En la parte inferior de la página, teclea un mensaje de confirmación corto y significativo que describa el cambio que realizaste al archivo. Puedes atribuir el cambio a mas de un autor en el mensaje del mismo. Para más información, vea "Creación de una confirmación con varios coautores".
6. Debajo de los campos para el mensaje de confirmación, decide si deseas agregar tu confirmación a la rama actual o a una rama nueva. Debajo de los campos del mensaje de confirmación, decide si deseas agregar tu confirmación a la rama actual o a una nueva rama. Si tu rama actual es la rama predeterminada, debes elegir crear una nueva rama para tu confirmación y después crear una solicitud de extracción. Para más información, vea "Creación de una solicitud de incorporación de cambios".
7. Haga clic en Proponer nuevo archivo.

Examples of contribution guidelines

If you're stumped, here are some good examples of contribution guidelines:

• The GitHub Docs contribution guidelines.
• The Ruby on Rails contribution guidelines.
• The Open Government contribution guidelines.

Further reading

• The Open Source Guides' section "Starting an Open Source Project"
• "Adding a license to a repository"