=== Introduction ===

This document intends to give few information about how to contribute to the i-MSCP project.
The i-MSCP development team is using git as version control management system. All i-MSCP git repositories are hosted on Github, allowing any user to fork them and submit patches.

=== How to start ===

If you want contribute to the i-MSCP project, you must first fork the development branch located at [[https://github.com/i-MSCP/imscp]]. In order, you must do the following:

  * Create an account on [[https://github.com/i-MSCP/imscp|Github]]
  * Create a fork of the i-MSCP development branch located at [[https://github.com/i-MSCP/imscp]]
  * Clone your fork on your local system

The latest task can be done like this on your local system:

  git clone git://github.com/<your_username>/imscp.git 

Once you did that, it's also recommended to create a specific feature branch. For instance, if you want create a new feature for i-MSCP called **new-feature**, just create the new-feature branch as follow:

  git branch new-feature
  
and then, you can start to add/modify files. See http://gitref.org/ to learn more about how to work with git.

When your work is ready, you can do a pull request to ask the i-MSCP development team to merge it in the development branch. This can be done from the Github interface. See  [[https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests|Howto do a pull request]] 

=== Keep your fork synced with the upstream branch ===

Sometimes is takes a while to merge your changes with upstream, a good way to sync your branch with the upstream is to add a second remote url (the upstream repository) and periodically fetch the changes from there:

  * Add the upstream (official) code into your server (needed to rebase)

  git remote add upstream https://github.com/i-MSCP/imscp.git

  * Fetch any new changes from the original repository

  git fetch upstream

  * Merge the upstream code with yours, no more steps if there aren't code conflicts.

  git merge upstream/master