Contributing guidelines

Thank you for your interest in improving the OpenSearch documentation! We value and appreciate all feedback and contributions from our community, including requests for additional documentation, corrections to existing content, and reports of technical issues with the documentation site.

You can create an issue asking us to change the documentation or contribute content yourself.

NOTE: If you’d like to contribute but don't know where to start, try browsing existing issues. Our projects use custom GitHub issue labels for status, version, type of request, and so on. We recommend starting with any issue labeled "good first issue" if you're a beginner or "help wanted" if you're a more experienced user.

Creating an issue

Use the documentation issue template to describe the change you'd like to make:

Go to https://github.com/opensearch-project/documentation-website/issues and select New issue.
Enter the requested information, including as much detail as possible, especially which version or versions the request affects.
Select Submit new issue.

The untriaged label is assigned automatically. During the triage process, the Documentation team will add the appropriate labels, assign the issue to a technical writer, and prioritize the request. We may follow up with you for additional information.

Contributing content

There are two ways to contribute content, depending on the magnitude of the change:

Minor changes: For small changes to existing files, like fixing typos or adding parameters, you can edit files in GitHub directly. This approach does not require cloning the repository and does not allow you to test the documentation.
Major changes: For changes you want to test first, like adding new or reorganizing pages or adding a table or section, you can edit files locally and push the changes to GitHub. This approach requires setting up a local version of the repository and allows you to test the documentation.

Contribution workflow

The workflow for contributing documentation is the same as the one for contributing code:

Make your changes.
Build the documentation website to check your work (only possible if you are making changes locally).
Submit a pull request (PR).
A maintainer reviews and merges your PR.

Before you start

Before contributing content, make sure to read the following resources:

NOTE: Make sure that any documentation you submit is your own work or work that you have the right to submit. We respect the intellectual property rights of others, and as part of contributing, we'll ask you to sign your contribution with a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) stating that you have the right to submit your contribution and that you understand that we will use your contribution.

Making minor changes

If you want to make minor changes to an existing file, you can use this approach:

Fork this repository.
In your fork on GitHub, navigate to the file that you want to change.
In the upper-right corner, select the pencil icon and edit the file.
In the upper-right corner, select Commit changes...*. Enter the commit message and optional description and select Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request.

Making major changes

If you're adding a new page or making major changes to the documentation, such as adding new images, sections, or styling, we recommend that you work in a local copy of the repository and test the rendered HTML before submitting a PR.

Setting up your local copy of the repository

Follow these steps to set up your local copy of the repository:

Fork this repository and clone your fork.
Navigate to your cloned repository.
Install Ruby if you don't already have it. We recommend RVM, but you can use any method you prefer:
```
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
rvm install 2.7
ruby -v
```
Install Jekyll if you don't already have it:
```
gem install bundler jekyll
```
Install the Jekyll dependencies:
```
bundle install
```

Making, viewing, and submitting changes

Here's how to build the website, make changes, and view them locally:

Build the website:
```
sh build.sh    
```
The build script should automatically open your web browser, but if it doesn't, open http://localhost:4000/docs/.
Create a new branch against the latest source on the main branch.
Edit the Markdown files that you want to change.
When you save a file, Jekyll automatically rebuilds the site and refreshes your web browser. This process can take 60--90 seconds.
When you're happy with how everything looks, commit, sign off, push your changes to your fork, and submit a PR.

Note that a PR requires DCO sign-off before we can merge it. You can use the -s command line option to append this automatically to your commit message, for example, git commit -s -m 'This is my commit message'. For more information, see https://github.com/apps/dco.

Review process

We greatly appreciate all contributions to the documentation and will review them as quickly as possible.

During the PR process, expect that there will be some back-and-forth. If you want your contribution to be merged quickly, try to respond to comments in a timely fashion, and let us know if you don't want to continue with the PR.

We use the Vale linter to ensure that our documentation adheres to the OpenSearch Project Style Guidelines. Addressing Vale comments on the PR expedites the review process. You can also install Vale locally so you can address the comments before creating a PR. For more information, see Style linting.

If we accept the PR, we will merge it and will backport it to the appropriate branches.

Style linting

To ensure that our documentation adheres to the OpenSearch Project Style Guidelines, we use the Vale linter. Addressing Vale comments on the PR expedites the review process. You can also install Vale locally as follows so you can address the comments before creating a PR:

Run brew install vale.
Run vale * from the documentation site root directory to lint all Markdown files. To lint a specific file, run vale /path/to/file.

Optionally, you can install the Vale VSCode extension, which integrates Vale with Visual Studio Code. By default, only errors and warnings are underlined. To change the minimum alert level to include suggestions, go to Vale VSCode > Extension Settings and select suggestion in the Vale > Vale CLI: Min Alert Level dropdown list.

Getting help

For help with the contribution process, reach out to one of the points of contact.

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