CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

Contributions to the tldr-pages project are most welcome!

All tldr pages are stored in Markdown right here on GitHub. Just open an issue or send a pull request, and we'll incorporate it as soon as possible.

To get started, please sign the Contributor License Agreement.

Note

When submitting a new command, please base your PR against the main branch and check if there's already a pull request in progress for it.

Guidelines

The basic format of a tldr page is a set of concrete usage examples.

Here are a few guidelines to get started:

1. Try to keep pages at around 5 examples. Pages can be longer or shorter when appropriate but don't exceed the maximum of eight examples. Remember, it's OK if the page doesn't cover everything; that's what man is for.
2. When in doubt, keep new command-line users in mind. Err on the side of clarity rather than terseness. For example, commands that require sudo should include it directly in the examples.
3. Try to incorporate the spelled-out version of single-letter options in the example's description. The goal is to allow people to understand the syntax of the commands, not just memorize it.
4. Introduce options gradually, starting with the simplest command invocations and using more complex examples progressively.
5. Focus on details specific to the command and avoid explaining general UNIX concepts that could apply to any command (i.e. relative/absolute paths, glob patterns/wildcards, special character escaping, ...).

These are all guidelines, not strict rules. Use proper judgement, keeping simplicity and user-friendliness as the top priorities.

When in doubt, have a look at a few existing pages :).

Directory structure

The English pages directory is called pages, under which the platform directories are present. Language-specific directories must follow the pattern pages.<locale>, where <locale> is a POSIX Locale Name in the form of <language>[_<country>], where:

• <language> is the shortest ISO 639 language code for the chosen language (see here for a complete list).
• <country> is the two-letter ISO 3166-1 country code for the chosen region (see here for a complete list).

The <country> code is optional and should only be added when there is a substantial difference between a language (ll) and its regional dialects (ll_CC1, ll_CC2, etc.). For example, both fr_FR and fr_BE should fall under the same pages.fr directory since there virtually is no difference in writing between standard French and Belgian French.

Platform directories

The pages directory and pages.* language-specific directories contain the platform directories, if they have at least one page of that platform.

1. If the command is available for two or more platforms, put it under the common directory.
2. If the command is only available for one platform, these are the available directories followed by their right platform:

• android: Android
• freebsd: FreeBSD
• openbsd: OpenBSD
• osx: OSX/Mac OS/macOS (will be replaced by macos)
• linux: any Linux distro
• netbsd: NetBSD
• sunos: SunOS
• windows: Windows

Markdown format

As a quick reference, the format of each page should match the following template:

# command-name

> Short, snappy description.
> Preferably one line; two are acceptable if necessary.
> More information: <https://url-to-upstream.tld>.

- Example description:

`command --option`

- Example description:

`command --option1 --option2 {{arg_value}}`

For page descriptions, you can additionally use See also: `command`. and subcommand reference.

Note

While we suggest only two lines for the page description, it is acceptable to have more than two lines if it is necessary to add additional information (i.e. pacman).

To see some examples of preexisting pages, you can look at:

• pwd - one of the simplest command examples
• tar - page with placeholders

In our pages, we use placeholders defined as being tokens within curly brackets. For example, in sleep {{5}}, the user can change 5 to any number.

Other examples but not limited to of our placeholder syntax are:

• {{path/to/directory}}
• {{path/to/directory1 path/to/directory2 ...}}

However, if the description suggests a specific value, leave it as part of the command, and not as a placeholder, for example:

- Display records more recent than 3 days:

`lastlog --time 3`

For more detailed formatting guidelines, refer to the style guide.

Subcommands

Many programs use subcommands for separating functionality, which may require their own separate pages.

For instance, git commit has its own page, as well as git push and many others.

To create a page for a subcommand, the program and subcommand need to be separated with a dash (-), so git-commit.md is shown when calling tldr git commit.

You should always add a base page (e.g. git) that describes the program and basic switches like --version or --help.

Referencing subcommands

The following methods can be used to reference subcommands:

• You can add a note saying Some subcommands such as `example command` have their own usage documentation to the main page. (See the subcommand reference page for translation templates.)
• You can use See also: `command1`, `command2`. template to reference similar commands, aliases and subcommands.
• Alternatively, the whole page can be converted to reference the main subcommands.

For example:

# command

> Short, snappy description.
> Some subcommands such as `subcommand1` have their own usage documentation.
> More information: <https://url-to-upstream.tld>.

- View documentation for creating something:

`tldr command-subcommand1`

- View documentation for managing something:

`tldr command-subcommand2`

See these examples for reference:

• git
• distrobox-create
• nmcli

Translations

Important

Translations of pages should be done based on the English (US) page in the pages directory. If the English pages don't exist for the command, it should be added first in a PR before creating a translation.

Translation of pages can be done by simply creating the corresponding page within the appropriate language-specific directory, creating that as well if it does not already exist.

Important

When adding a new language to tldr, it is suggested to add it to the translation templates along with any page additions.

Tip

When fixing errors in an existing translation, it is suggested to update the page to match the latest version of the English page.

To see the current progress of all translations, you can visit https://lukwebsforge.github.io/tldri18n/, which provides a dynamically updated table of all pages and their translations.

Some examples of valid locale tags:

• French: fr.
• Chinese: zh.
• Chinese (Singapore): zh_SG.
• Portuguese (Brazil): pt_BR.

A list of translated templates for alias pages can be found here.

It is acceptable for several pages to get translated in one pull request.

For more information about language-specific rules, refer to the style guide.

Inclusive language

Where possible, use inclusive language in the content of pages. For example, prefer terms like "denylist"/"allowlist" instead of "blacklist"/"whitelist", "primary"/"secondary" instead of "master"/"slave", "they" instead of "him"/"her", etc. Of course, this shouldn't sacrifice content clarity, such as when documenting tools where this terminology has specific technical meanings and its usage is central to explaining the involved concepts.

Submitting a pull request

Testing pages locally

Once you have written a tldr page, you can test its syntax locally using tldr-lint.

The latest version of NodeJS is required to install tldr-lint with the following command:

npm install --global tldr-lint

Once it is installed, you can test your page by running the following command:

tldr-lint {{path/to/page.md}}

Now, you are ready to submit a pull request!

Tip

Additionally, inside the tldr directory you can install the dependencies using the npm install command and now when you commit your changes, the tests will run automatically via the pre-commit hook. (To skip the pre-commit hook and immediately commit your changes use the git commit --no-verify command).

Submitting changes

The easiest way to submit a change is to edit the page directly on the GitHub interface.

Check out the step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) on GitHub Help.

Alternatively, you can do most of the process using Git on the command-line.

Tip

After creating a pull request, it is suggested to enable the "Allow edits by maintainers" option (This only needs to be done once the first time you create a PR). It allows maintainers to make changes to your pull request and assist you in getting it merged.

Accepting suggestions within a pull request

The easiest way to apply suggested changes is to accept the suggestion made on your pull request. Refer to the GitHub docs for more details.

To commit a suggestion to your pull request, click on Commit suggestion:

If you want to commit multiple suggestions, go to the "Files changed" tab and batch all suggestions. Now, click the Commit suggestions button and enter a commit message to create a single commit.

Commit message and PR title

For the commit message and PR title of page changes, use the following format:

{{command}}: type of change

Where {{command}} is the name of the command being modified, and type of change can be (but not limited to) one of the following examples:

• For a new page addition: ls: add page, docker-container-rm: add alias page
• For a page edit: cat: fix typo, git-push: add --force example
• For a new translation of an existing page: cp: add Tamil translation
• For a modification to the translation of an existing page: cp: fix typo in Tamil translation
• For related changes to some pages: grep, find, locate: synchronize format of wildcards
• For related changes to several unrelated pages: pages*: fix Linux casing
• For multiple subcommand page additions: git-{add, push, ...}: add page
• For modifying multiple pages in a language: pages.<locale>/*: update pages

For script changes, the commit message and the PR title can be (but not limited to) one of the following examples:

• For a new script addition: scripts/{{script_name}}: add script
• For a script edit: scripts/set-alias-page: fix performance issue
• For changes that affect multiple scripts: scripts: replace insecure library

For other cases, it is suggested to follow https://www.conventionalcommits.org/ as much as possible.

Name collisions

When there are multiple commands sharing the same name, the existing page of the command and the new command can be renamed to command.1 and so on following a numbering scheme or based on the programming language i.e. command.js. The base page can be updated to reference the newly renamed/created pages by following this subcommand reference format.

See the following page for reference:

• just

Licensing

This repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The contents of the scripts/ directory are licensed under the MIT license.

Any contributions to this project are governed by the Contributor License Agreement.