DOC: Why do we have two README's for contributing?

[gfyoung]

This one under the documentation folder here and this one under the .github folder here.

I think we should just have one point to the other to avoid having to maintain it in two different places.

[jreback]

I think you have a typo in the links (they are the same).

In any event, the canonical contributing guide is actually in the docs: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/contributing.html, but github has this 'feature' where they have a CONTRIBUTING.md. Our docs are .rst so this is problem.

maybe best is to change .github/CONTRIBUTING.md to just point directly to the docs.

[jreback]

though maybe the .github/CONTRIBUTING.md is just a rendered version of the docs.

We had a discussion about this a while back but I don't remember.

@jorisvandenbossche ?

[jorisvandenbossche]

As far as I know, the one just a conversion of the other (so the .github/CONTRIBUTING.md should never be updated directly). We just keep forgetting that :-)

But, it is actually stated in the same docs .. See the note in http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/contributing.html#about-the-pandas-documentation

[jorisvandenbossche]

We also have a wiki page about this: https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/wiki/Regenerating-CONTRIBUTING.md

I don't feel strongly between the current situation or just putting a link in the contributing.md file to the docs

[gfyoung]

@jreback : Good catch on the links. I updated them. In any case, I'm perfectly fine with just linking the CONTRIBUTING.md to the .rst version. It seems easier to maintain. How about that?

[jreback]

I don't think you can do that. github only renders the .md. I think the current soln is pretty decent actually.

[gfyoung]

That's not what I meant. I meant we should just say, "Go read the canonical docs" and provide the link to the file, that's all.

[jreback]

@jorisvandenbossche ?

[gfyoung]

@jorisvandenbossche : Thoughts on my proposal above?

[jorisvandenbossche]

I would be fine with a link to the main contributing docs, instead of having a copy of the full content (can't directly remember the reason why we originally did it like this).

But, I would do a bit more than just linking. Something like a very short summary, and linking to some different parts of the contributing docs.
For example directing people who want to submit a bug to the section on how to report an issue, and for people making a PR a checklist or link to checklist in the contributing docs (seems we actually don't have a good overview of what we expect currently).