[Solved][1.12.1] Proper way to contribute pull requests to Forge

[jabelar]

So I figure I should give back to the Forge developer community who've made such an amazing thing from which I've derived years of a fun hobby of modding. So I have a very simple pull request idea to start with but I want to make sure that I go about the right process for the pull request. Since I've primarily been a solitary programmer, I haven't had to do a lot of working with other people who are collaborating; therefore I'm nervous that I might break things by creating a bad branch/fork/commit. So I have a few questions.  

 

1) Fork, branch or tree? I see some commits that seem to be on the main branch, but others are on a fork (which seems to be listed as a "tree"). Should I create a fork, a new branch, or just make commits to the main repository? Like should I be working in MinecraftForge/MinecraftForge or on jabelar/MinecraftForge?

 

2) How do you actually test it? Can you run it from the IDE or do you need to build it and apply it to a Minecraft installation? Once you clone the repository do you run some gradle commands to set up the workspace and make it more amenable to Eclipse? 

 

3) How do you make sure the IDE doesn't ripple a bunch of formatting through the entire codebase -- I have various "on save" features turned on in Eclipse to do things like update Javadoc, update licenses, and do various import cleanup, @Override cleanup, indent formatting and such. I wouldn't want to create a commit that has changes to every file in the repository, but I also want to keep Eclipse set up the way I like it for my other modding. Should I create a separate workspace or something to help manage this?

 

Sorry for the newbie questions...

Edited September 20, 2017 by jabelar

[Abastro]

https://github.com/MinecraftForge/MinecraftForge/wiki/If-you-want-to-contribute-to-Forge

+ I think it's better to create a new branch for the case when you make multiple PRs at once. Also, afaik it should be on new workspace.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Abastro

[quadraxis]

Also check out the section on contributing in the official docs: https://mcforge.readthedocs.io/en/latest/forgedev/

[jabelar]

Perfect, thanks guys.