Contributing guidelines

[elegault]

I came here to ask where the link to the contributing guidelines page is, only to finally discover it to the top right of this new discussion page (under "Helpful resources")! This seems unnecessarily buried - I swear there used to be a link or a contributing section in README.md? Maybe the link can be added to the About section on the Code page so it is more discoverable?

[aafvstam]

Even with you explaining where to find it I couldn't find the link (until you go into the 'new discussion' option) but once I found the link it redirected me to the https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-Add-in-samples/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md file located just -next- to the README.md on the root of the Repo🤣:

I guess it is a standard setup where "CONTRIBUTING" is the default name, but it would help if it was named with a bit of a description in the title...

[AlexJerabek]

Fair points! Thanks for raising them. I created PR #496 to address this. I'm open to feedback about placement and all that.

[elegault]

Now here's something related and very meta: I see some small changes I'd like to suggest for the CONTRIBUTING.md page so I can do some...contributing (lol). However, the general focus of the article is for contributing samples. So, what's the process if I want to submit an edit for something that is NOT a sample? In this scenario, the suggestion for samples is to create a new folder based on the [product]-[scenario]-[platform] naming format. That won't be relevant for this change; perhaps "Eric-Legault-patch-1" would be the format as per what you did for PR #496?

Also, should there be a suggestion on how the branch itself should be named? The same as the folder?

Lastly, the big small change I'd suggest is to replace all references to the main branch with master, as that is the name of the default upstream branch when you fork it.

[AlexJerabek]

I'm not sure we specify guidance around the branch names for contributions. The "username-patch-#" format is the GitHub default when you make an edit through the browser.

Generally, I think the fixes you're describing fall under the "Typos, issues, bugs and contributions" section of the contributing guide. We're generally less worried about these following particular standards when compared to the samples.

As for the "main" versus "master", I'm under the impression the default is "main" When I make a fork, I get this:

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