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What mistakes do first time contributors to Bitcoin Core often make with their first pull request?

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The most common mistakes I have seen first time contributors make (and this includes me) is:

  • Not opening the PR from a topic branch of the forked Bitcoin Core repo and instead opening it from the master branch of the forked Bitcoin Core repo

  • Not adding the correct label at the start of the title of the PR

    e.g. doc: Address typo in file X

  • Not squashing commits when there is no need for multiple commits

  • Opening a PR for individual typos without running the linter and finding additional typos

    e.g. ./test/lint/lint-spelling.sh

  • Opening a PR for individual typos but not updating test/lint/lint-spelling.ignore-words.txt to ignore false positives identified from running the linter.

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  • This seems more appropriate in Bitcoin Core's developer documentation. I very much doubt Bitcoin SE is where people come looking for open-source contribution guidelines. Dec 27, 2020 at 19:31
  • It is in the docs of the Core repo. But presumably because the docs are so long (can't be helped) new contributors don't follow the basics. Having this link to point to will save me typing the same thing over and over again :) Dec 27, 2020 at 19:40
  • How about linking to the documentation instead? Dec 27, 2020 at 19:41
  • I'm sorry I don't know what you mean. I do link to the Core docs in this answer. If A links to B what is A and B in this context? Dec 27, 2020 at 19:43
  • I just don't think Bitcoin SE is the best place to maintain this information. Dec 27, 2020 at 19:46

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