How to Contribute to git.ignore.pl

Everyone is welcome to submit any patches, bug reports, comments, questions, ideas related to projects hosted at git.ignore.pl by sending an e-mail to:

patches@ignore.pl

The list is moderated. Accepted messages will appear at:

patches.ignore.pl

Before sending an e-mail, see:

  1. Agreement
  2. About real names
  3. General recommendations
  4. Instruction aka "How to send patches"
  5. Why not X?
grand opening

Agreement

By sending an e-mail to the mailing list, you:

  1. Agree for your messages to appear in the web archive,
  2. Agree for your commits to be merged and maintained within the repository,
  3. Agree for your commits to appear in the web git interface at git.ignore.pl,
  4. Declare that you have read and understood any additional project-related contributing information and/or rules,
  5. Declare the patches you send are your original work and/or you hold all the necessary copyrights for it to be published here,
  6. Declare that, if patches are based upon other work, to the best extent of your knowledge, you are allowed to modify and republish them,
  7. Declare that, if patches were provided to you by third party, that third party declared the same agreement and statements as are written here,
  8. Declare the patches are made with the goodwill towards the project and the community.

Projects may supersede these general agreement with, for example, Developer Certificate of Origin along with a sign-off mechanism (be it in commit messages or another way).

About real names

At the moment, unless project specifies otherwise, use of a strict "real name" policy is not required. Sign-offs with nicknames or pseudonyms are acceptable the same way sign-offs with real names are.

It'd be best to know who is who. If you plan to be a long-term contributor, consider sending the maintainers contact information as a lifeguard in case of legal troubles. It'd be best if we could get to know one another, drink together, and know who is behind the nickname, without worrying about legal stuff, but it's not always possible. Please do inform maintainers in case you are available to go out drinking.

General recommendations

For patches:

For discussions, bug reports, others:

Instruction

Let's say you want to send the latest commit, the preferable method is:

$ git send-email --to=patches@ignore.pl --subject-prefix="PATCH repo" HEAD^

If not configured you may need to set SMTP server, log in, and so on. See git-send-email(1) for details, it's a good manual. You may want to tweak CCs to include maintainers and authors of the affected code.

Now, what if you must use something like Mozilla Thunderbird for whatever reason?

First, ensure that the mail you send is plain text. This is the most important part, find it in application settings and enforce plain text. Test it on yourself by sending an email and the going into e-mail's source. Once this is done:

  1. Generate a patch (you may do it even in a send-email workflow to run some checks on it):
    $ git format-patch --subject-prefix="PATCH repo" HEAD^
    0001-example-commit.patch
    
  2. Open it in a text editor.
  3. Copy the Subject as your subject:
    From 557a61e1f0d87f706779b0eb18dfcd11e60dfb5f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
    From: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
    Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200
    Subject: [PATCH repo] example commit
    
    This is an example commit showcasing an exported patch.
    
  4. Copy everything excluding first blank line. Include the first --- and everything below:
    Subject: [PATCH repo] example commit
    
    
    This is an example commit showcasing an exported patch.
    
    If you don't have a longer commit message, then your patch will start with
    "---".  If so, start copying with it.
    
    Signed-off-by: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
    ---
     Makefile | 2 +-
     1 file changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
    
    diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
    index eff7220..d6cda36 100644
    --- a/Makefile
    +++ b/Makefile
    @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ install:
    
     uninstall:
     	rm -rf $(DESTDIR)$(LUA_LMOD)/example
    -	rm -f $(DESTIR)$(BINDIR)/example
    +	rm -f $(DESTDIR)$(BINDIR)/example
    
     test:
     	busted
    --
    2.51.0
    
    
  5. Send it!

Why not github.com?

Primarily because of my preference. I love e-mail git workflow and I find it very comfortable to use. I think this workflow works, is reliable, and I don't see a reason to change it entirely to something else. I'd want to encourage people to use it and not be afraid of it. I dislike big companies.

Yes, I heard about github.com, gitlab.com, sr.ht, codeberg.org, and/or bitbucket.org. At least include sourceforge.net in the list!