whatwg/html-build

Workflow is not good for people without push access to whatwg/html who want to do PRs

Closed this issue · 4 comments

Because it default clones whatwg/html, if I directed a first-time contributor here, the instructions in the readme would get them stuck, unable to push after making changes.

I'd suggest a prompt in build.sh that asks them where to check out from. I am thinking:

Didn't find the HTML source on your system...
Enter where you would like to clone it from (GitHub username or URL):

(URL detection can be done by looking for :.)

Alternately a quick fix is just to update the readme to suggest checking out your fork in a sibling directory before building for the first time.

And as we saw yesterday even for folks with commit access the current setup can ruin PR merges.

I'm a somewhat advanced Git user, so perhaps I'm insensitive to what it's like to deal with this stuff, but how can it help to just clone the fork? Unless you plan to only make one commit ever, you need two remotes: an origin to get the latest master, and your fork to push your branches to.

how can it help to just clone the fork? Unless you plan to only make one commit ever, you need two remotes: an origin to get the latest master, and your fork to push your branches to.

I’m not sure but I think at least part of the intent of the original requirement was the sorta bare-minimal goal of enabling users to just build their own copy of the spec from the latest sources simply just by running the build script.

If so, it seems like it meets that goal pretty well at least. They can make changes and re-run the script and observe the effects of the changes. So maybe it just helps them get started, get oriented.

But anyway, maybe Domenic can elaborate when he gets back online for the day.

Yeah, @sideshowbarker's got it. This is just for getting started. If they're planning to actively make PRs they'll need to add another remote... we could add more readme instructions for how to do that later. But it seems out of the scope of the original script.