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docs: improve contributor experience with setup guide and enhanced gitignore #39247
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Pull Request Overview
This PR improves the onboarding experience by enhancing the main README with clear setup instructions and introducing a dedicated CONTRIBUTING guide.
- Expanded README with prerequisites, quick start steps, and script explanations
- Added a
CONTRIBUTING.mdwith first-time setup, branch workflow, and easy-entry tasks
Reviewed Changes
Copilot reviewed 2 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| README.md | Added Prerequisites, Quick Start, and Available Scripts sections |
| CONTRIBUTING.md | New contributor guide covering setup, change workflow, and help resources |
Comments suppressed due to low confidence (4)
README.md:10
- Use an asterisk (
*) instead of a hyphen for bullet lists to comply with the repository's Markdown style guidelines.
- **Node.js**: Version 20 or 22 (see [engines](package.json) in package.json)
README.md:37
- Switch this list item to use an asterisk (
*) instead of a hyphen for consistency with the project content guidelines.
- `npm run dev` - Start development server with English content only
CONTRIBUTING.md:1
- Replace the hardcoded product name "GitHub Docs" with the corresponding Liquid variable (e.g.
{% data variables.product.github %}) to ensure variable-driven consistency across content.
# Contributing to GitHub Docs
CONTRIBUTING.md:54
- Use an asterisk (
*) for this bullet list item instead of a hyphen to align with the Markdown bulleted list convention in our content guidelines.
- Fix typos in documentation
@surajsk2003 Thanks for opening a PR! One thing to note before I take a closer look at the rest of this: the README is actually meant for internal use, which is why we have a separate contributing doc. The public docs repo and the private docs-internal repo sync several times a day, so all the files have to be exactly the same. That means that files meant primarily for internal use are also available publicly. It is one of my goals to update the README to make it clearer that it's for internal use, because it's pretty bad, but I haven't gotten there yet.
Let me take a look at the rest and maybe check in with the rest of the team, and I'll let you know what we find helpful in your suggestions. 💛
Edit: I've realized, looking at your PR, that our links to our CONTRIBUTING.md have been broken for who knows how long. Which is...great. Anyway, I'm fixing that, and here is the correct link so you can see what it has and alter that instead of creating your own instance of it.
Thank you so much for the clarification and your thoughtful response 💛
I completely understand now that the README.md is meant for internal use and needs to remain in sync across both the public and private repos. That makes perfect sense — I’ll refrain from modifying it further.
I’ll revise my PR to shift the onboarding and setup-related improvements (like prerequisites, quick start, available scripts, and beginner-friendly suggestions) into the correct CONTRIBUTING.md file instead — based on the updated link you shared.
Also, I’m glad this PR helped uncover the broken link issue — even indirectly! 😄 Please feel free to suggest anything further that could make the contribution more helpful to new developers.
Will update the PR shortly.
A stale label has been added to this pull request because it has been open 30 days with no activity. If you think this pull request should remain open, please add a new comment.
Why
Improve the onboarding experience for new contributors by providing clear setup instructions and better project hygiene.
What's Being Changed
Enhanced
README.mdnpmcommandsImproved
.gitignore.DS_Store,Thumbs.db, etc.)Created
CONTRIBUTING.mdChecklist
In most cases, the author can be the SME. For open source contributions, GitHub staff may review.
Let me know if any adjustments are required. Happy to improve the experience for future contributors!