contributing.md

• Commit message
  • Brief, desciptive (not overly descriptive)
  • 50 characters
  • written in the imperative mood ("add" instead of "added")
  • no trailing puncuation
  • should either be in sentence case (i.e., the first letter of the first word capitalized), or of the form “area: change description”.
• Description
  • Why is the change important?
  • Did you consider and reject alternate formulations of the same idea?
  • Are there relevant issues or discussions elsewhere?
• Test plan
  • Describe what someone should do to verify that your changes are correct
  • automated tests
  • manual tests
  • tests of the form “verify that when you change the code in this way, you see this effect.”
  • shell commands and expected outputs