how to contribute

Author: lueck

contributing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+# Contributing
+
+## Making a Release
+
+Git release tags are the single source of truth for release
+numbers and release triggers. There is no version information in the
+pom file. A default version number is contained in
+`.mvn/maven.config`, which should be kept up to date. However, it is
+overridden in the CI/CD pipelines by the release tag.
+
+Releases of installable packages will be created with github actions
+on tags with a name matching the pattern
+`[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+(-.*)?`,
+i.e. `<MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<BUGFIX>[-<SUFFIX>]`. But only tags matching the
+pattern `[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+` will result in an update of the
+descriptor file.--So, releases with a suffix are considered kind of
+beta and will only occur in the tag's release bundle.
+
+To produce a release:
+
+- first push the branch to be released
+- then tag it with the tag name matching the above pattern
+
+This will produce a release on [releases/tag/<TAG_NAME>](releases/tag)
+and update the [descriptor
+file](https://scdh.github.io/oxbytei/descriptor.xml).
+
+The pattern for release tags is protected.