Find and claim an issue

On this page, you choose what you want to work on. As a contributor you can work on whatever you want. If you are new to contributing, you should start by working with our known issues.

Understand the issue types

An existing issue is something reported by a Docker user. As issues come in, our maintainers triage them. Triage is its own topic. For now, it is important for you to know that triage includes ranking issues according to difficulty.

Triaged issues have one of these labels:

As the table states, these labels are meant as guidelines. You might have written a whole plugin for Docker in a personal project and never contributed to Docker. With that kind of experience, you could take on an exp/expert or exp/master level task.

Claim a beginner or novice issue

In this section, you find and claim an open documentation lines issue.

Go to the docker/docker repository.
Click on the “Issues” link.
A list of the open issues appears.
Look for the exp/beginner items on the list.
Click on the “labels” dropdown and select exp/beginner.
The system filters to show only open exp/beginner issues.
Open an issue that interests you.
The comments on the issues can tell you both the problem and the potential solution.
Make sure that no other user has chosen to work on the issue.
We don't allow external contributors to assign issues to themselves. So, you need to read the comments to find if a user claimed the issue by leaving a #dibs comment on the issue.
When you find an open issue that both interests you and is unclaimed, add a #dibs comment.
This example uses issue 11038. Your issue # will be different depending on what you claimed. After a moment, Gordon the Docker bot, changes the issue status to claimed.
Make a note of the issue number; you'll need it later.

Sync your fork and create a new branch

If you have followed along in this guide, you forked the docker/docker repository. Maybe that was an hour ago or a few days ago. In any case, before you start working on your issue, sync your repository with the upstream docker/docker master. Syncing ensures your repository has the latest changes.

To sync your repository:

Open a terminal on your local host.
Change directory to the docker-fork root.
```
 $ cd ~/repos/docker-fork
```

Checkout the master branch.

 $ git checkout master
 Switched to branch 'master'
 Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

Recall that origin/master is a branch on your remote GitHub repository.

Make sure you have the upstream remote docker/docker by listing them.

 $ git remote -v
 origin	https://github.com/moxiegirl/docker.git (fetch)
 origin	https://github.com/moxiegirl/docker.git (push)
 upstream	https://github.com/docker/docker.git (fetch)
 upstream	https://github.com/docker/docker.git (push)

If the upstream is missing, add it.

 $ git remote add upstream https://github.com/docker/docker.git

Fetch all the changes from the upstream master branch.

 $ git fetch upstream master
 remote: Counting objects: 141, done.
 remote: Compressing objects: 100% (29/29), done.
 remote: Total 141 (delta 52), reused 46 (delta 46), pack-reused 66
 Receiving objects: 100% (141/141), 112.43 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
 Resolving deltas: 100% (79/79), done.
 From github.com:docker/docker
  * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD

This command says get all the changes from the master branch belonging to the upstream remote.

Rebase your local master with the upstream/master.

 $ git rebase upstream/master
 First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
 Fast-forwarded master to upstream/master.

This command applies all the commits from the upstream master to your local master.

Check the status of your local branch.
```
$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 38 commits.
  (use "git push" to publish your local commits)
nothing to commit, working directory clean
```
Your local repository now has all the changes from the upstream remote. You need to push the changes to your own remote fork which is origin master.

Push the rebased master to origin master.

 $ git push origin master
 Username for 'https://github.com': moxiegirl
 Password for 'https://moxiegirl@github.com': 
 Counting objects: 223, done.
 Compressing objects: 100% (38/38), done.
 Writing objects: 100% (69/69), 8.76 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
 Total 69 (delta 53), reused 47 (delta 31)
 To https://github.com/moxiegirl/docker.git
    8e107a9..5035fa1  master -> master

Create a new feature branch to work on your issue.
Your branch name should have the format XXXX-descriptive where XXXX is the issue number you are working on. For example:
```
 $ git checkout -b 11038-fix-rhel-link
 Switched to a new branch '11038-fix-rhel-link'
```
Your branch should be up-to-date with the upstream/master. Why? Because you branched off a freshly synced master. Let's check this anyway in the next step.
Rebase your branch from upstream/master.
```
 $ git rebase upstream/master
 Current branch 11038-fix-rhel-link is up to date.
```
At this point, your local branch, your remote repository, and the Docker repository all have identical code. You are ready to make changes for your issue.

Where to go next

At this point, you know what you want to work on and you have a branch to do your work in. Go onto the next section to learn how to work on your changes.