DOC: Suggest Additional Linked GitHub Tutorials/Resources for Forking Workflows in Contributing Guide

[ssharp0]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that the issue still exists on the latest versions of the docs on main here

Location of the documentation

https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/development/contributing.html

Documentation problem

I wanted to provide an idea and suggestion with the goal of aiding new contributors. I feel that the contributing guide documentation linked above could be improved with additional linked resources to GitHub tutorials and explanations for forking, branches, pull requests. etc. I believe these linked resources and tutorials could be useful for new contributors as I found them very helpful in better understanding the general process. It may also help to lessen confusion/questions that arise.

I do not see any related issue in the issues tab.

Suggested fix for documentation

I would suggest adding links to GitHub documentation for 1) contributing to projects, 2) forking a repo, 3) pull requests, and 4) working with forks.

I would add this information in the Contributing Guide 'Version control, Git and GitHub' section as my suggestions address GitHub related workflows.

The section already provides helpful links for learning more about Git, but I wanted to include a few more direct resources that address the forking workflow. These may aid new contributors who are unsure about forking in GitHub and would like easily found resources for extra clarity/help as they get setup for contributing to the pandas project.

Below is my suggested update to the documentation (updated links to show in markdown format vs Sphinx):

Version control, Git, and GitHub

...

Also, the project follows a forking workflow further described on this page whereby contributors fork the repository, make changes and then create a pull request. So please be sure to read and follow all the instructions in this guide.

If you are new to contributing to projects through forking on GitHub, take a look at the GitHub documentation for contributing to projects. GitHub provides a quick tutorial using a test repository that may help you become more familiar with forking a repository, cloning a fork, creating a feature branch, pushing changes and making pull requests.

Below are some useful resources for learning more about forking and pull requests on GitHub:

• the GitHub documentation for forking a repo.
• the GitHub documentation for collaborating with pull requests.
• the GitHub documentation for working with forks.

[ssharp0]

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