Qortal-Hub/docs/contribution.md

🤝 Contributing Guide

Thank you for your interest in contributing! We follow a structured Git workflow to keep the project clean, stable, and production-ready at all times.

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📦 Branch Overview

Branch	Purpose
master	Stable, production-ready code. All releases are tagged from here.
develop	Active development branch. All new features go here first.
release/x.y.z	Pre-release branch for staging, QA, and final polish.

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🌿 Creating a Feature or Fix

1. Start from develop:

   git checkout develop
   git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name
   

2. Make your changes and commit them.

3. Push your branch:

   git push origin feature/your-feature-name
   

4. Open a Pull Request into develop.

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🚀 Releasing Code (Maintainers Only)

A new release/x.y.z branch must be created for every release.

1. Create a release/ branch from master:

   git checkout master
   git checkout -b release/1.2.0
   

2. Merge in develop or selected branches if develop is not ready:

   git merge develop
   # or
   git merge feature/finished-feature
   git merge feature/another-complete-feature
   

3. Polish, test, and fix issues as needed.

4. Merge back into develop:

   git checkout develop
   git merge release/1.2.0
   git push origin develop
   

5. Finalize the release:

   git checkout master
   git merge release/1.2.0
   git tag v1.2.0
   git push origin master --tags
   

6. Delete the release branch:

   git branch -d release/1.2.0
   git push origin --delete release/1.2.0