documentation/Contributing-to-Mastodon/Translating-Github-Cheat-Sheet.md

Translating GitHub Cheat Sheet

Install Git

1. Install Git based on what operating system you have
2. Add your identity to your git environment. (If you use an email associated with your GitHub account your profile will show a heat map of your commit activity).

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

NOTE: Use quotations around your name because of the space.

Fork The Repository

1. Navigate to Mastodon's GitHub Page
2. Click Fork in the top right.
3. There will now be a copy of the repository on your account.

Clone The Repository

1. Open Terminal on your computer and navigate to a place where you want to store the project using cd (ex. cd ~/Documents)
2. Download a copy of the project using

git clone https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/mastodon`

3. Write your awesome translations following the translating guide

Push To Your Repository

1. Open Terminal and navigate to where you stored mastodon (ex. cd ~/Documents/mastodon)
2. Type git status to see files you have modified or added.
3. We need to add those to the commit we're about to make and we can add them all at once with

git add .

4. We can commit everything to our local copy with

git commit -m "YOUR MESSAGE HERE"

You'll want to make your commit message something short, but meaningful as it's visible to everyone. A good example would be, "Added French localization". 5. Now you can push your changes to your remote copy of mastodon using

git push

Pull Request

1. Click this to start a new pull request, or navigate to Mastodon's GitHub Page, click Pull requests, and New pull request
2. On the Compare Changes page you will want to click compare across forks
3. The base fork should be tootsuite/mastodon:master and the head fork should be YOURUSERNAME/mastodon:YOURBRANCH. This will show you a summary of changed files.
4. Click Create pull request and explain your changes.

Finished

Congratulations! Your pull request will be reviewed for merging into the repository.

If you had any questions or confusions during this process please submit a documentation issue or pull request clarifying confusing areas.

If things get overwhelming, copy out your translation work, delete the project locally, remove the fork from your account, and start the process over again.

If you would prefer to not work in a Terminal, there are GUI clients available for git.