New contributor (asking for best practice when working with issues?)

[Dmitry Mochalov <ri...@gmail.com>]

 Hi everybody!
A am a new contributor but a long user of NetBeans (since 2010). After
using it so much including in commercial project I want to contribute to
developing NetBeans.

I created an issue in the issue tracker:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NETBEANS-3929#

and forked the NetBeans repository, created a branch, did some changes to
code and tested it locally.
What should I do next? Discuss the issue in the issue tracker? Wait for
some response in the issue tracker or could I simply create a Pull requect?
Should I change the state of the issue after starting to make some changes
to code?
What is the best practice here?

Also, I have a question regarding adding comments to the codebase. Is it
considered a good practice adding comments and javadocs to the existing
codebase when working on fixing something?

Here (
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Submitting+Pull+Request+on+Apache+NetBeans
) i have not found the relevant information.

There is the point "Don't change code that is correct and works." but is
adding a comment considered changing the code?

RE: New contributor (asking for best practice when working with issues?)

[Eirik Bakke <eb...@ultorg.com>]

> What should I do next? Discuss the issue in the issue tracker? Wait for some response in the issue tracker or could I simply create a Pull requect?

If you have working code, a Pull Request is usually a great place to continue the discussion, polish up the patch, and eventually get it merged. Make sure your commit description mentions the JIRA number, e.g. "[NETBEANS-3929] Allow remote git tag to be deleted from Git UI".

Once you create a Pull Request, a link to it will be automatically added to the JIRA issue (based on the number being mentioned in the description).

> Also, I have a question regarding adding comments to the codebase. Is it considered a good practice adding comments and javadocs to the existing codebase when working on fixing something?
> There is the point "Don't change code that is correct and works." but is adding a comment considered changing the code?

Adding comments and Javadoc seems like a great thing to do... it's easy to verify from the diffs that they don't cause any damage. The thing to avoid is perhaps formatting changes that are not in code that's already being edited, or changes in files that are unrelated to the issue that the PR is linked to. In particular, it's a bad idea to do an "auto-format" of the entire file and just blindly committing all the changes.

-- Eirik

-----Original Message-----
From: Dmitry Mochalov <ri...@gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, March 1, 2020 6:56 AM
To: dev@netbeans.apache.org
Subject: New contributor (asking for best practice when working with issues?)

 Hi everybody!
A am a new contributor but a long user of NetBeans (since 2010). After using it so much including in commercial project I want to contribute to developing NetBeans.

I created an issue in the issue tracker:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NETBEANS-3929#

and forked the NetBeans repository, created a branch, did some changes to code and tested it locally.
What should I do next? Discuss the issue in the issue tracker? Wait for some response in the issue tracker or could I simply create a Pull requect?
Should I change the state of the issue after starting to make some changes to code?
What is the best practice here?

Also, I have a question regarding adding comments to the codebase. Is it considered a good practice adding comments and javadocs to the existing codebase when working on fixing something?

Here (
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Submitting+Pull+Request+on+Apache+NetBeans
) i have not found the relevant information.

There is the point "Don't change code that is correct and works." but is adding a comment considered changing the code?