OK, so is there a dummies guide to getting started with this?
I can program, and I’m sure I can hack on ruby without problems, but I have no experience with git or docker.
I’ve read discourse/CONTRIBUTING.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub which is impressively complex (presumably because I’m not used to git), but it does not explain how to get from at docker install to something I can clone/checkout/fetch/rebase whatever.
I did the git clone git://github.com/discourse/discourse.git into /var/work along side the /var/www inside the docker shell so I could compare them. Other that the git differences, and some probably runtime files, there is the www/discourse/config/discourse.conf file and the log, plugins, and public (like assets) and vendor subdirectories. It’s not clear to me how I get something checked out from git while retaining the rest of the files necessary for the server to run.
I’d also like to know what I need to do after making a change to ensure my server is running the changes (what restart command is needed).
And optionally, it would be nice to know if it is possible to run a second copy of discourse (say on a different port) so that users wouldn’t see any of my hacking until it comes through. I suppose I could set up yet another instance at digitalocean and hack there. Sharing the database and settings would be fine. And for the moment, I can just hack away as I haven’t invited many people to try out discourse yet, but down the tack it would be less than ideal to keep messing up the site.
Anyway, a few hints or some additional explanations in the CONTRIBUTING.md file would certainly make it reduce the barrier to people helping. Thanks.