First Contribution

If you are looking to make your first contribution, follow the steps below.

Fork the repository by clicking on the fork button on the top of the Github page of the MATE package. This will create a copy of this repository in your account.

Now clone the forked repository to your machine. Go to your GitHub account, open the forked repository, click on the code button and then click the copy to clipboard icon.

Open a terminal and run the following git command:

git clone url-you-just-copied

where url-you-just-copied is the url to this repository (your fork of this project).

For example:

git clone https://github.com/this-is-you/mate-calc

where this-is-you is your GitHub username. Here you’re copying the contents of the repository on GitHub to your computer.

Change to the repository directory on your computer (if you are not already there).

Now create a branch using the git checkout command:

git checkout -b your-new-branch-name

For example:

git checkout -b better-factorization

Now open the source code files that you would like to change in a text editor.

Make some changes. To test if your changes are working correctly you probably need to build and install the project.

If you go to the project directory and execute the command git status, you’ll see there are changes.

Add those changes to the branch you just created using the git add command:

git add modified-file.c

Replace modified-file.c with the name of the file you actually edited.

Now commit those changes using the git commit command:

git commit -m "Commit Message"

replacing Commit Message with something meaningful that describes your changes.

Push your changes using the command git push:

git push origin add-your-branch-name

replacing add-your-branch-name with the name of the branch you created earlier.

If you go to your repository on GitHub, you’ll see a Compare & pull request button. Click on that button.

Now submit the pull request.