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Upstream contribution policy

conda-store builds on top of several open source libraries, and critically, many projects in the conda ecosystem. Contributing back to upstream projects shows good open source citizenship and the conda-store development team aims to do so wherever relevant. This policy document outlines some best practices and considerations for upstream contributions.

Upstream first​

As the grounding principle, we always prefer contributing features or patches to upstream projects before implementing workarounds or developing conda-store-specific solutions. This helps us develop better, more sustainable solutions that benefit a larger community. If you are unsure about when or how to contribute, open an issue in any conda-store repository and mention the @conda-incubator/conda-store team for input.

Critical upstream projects​

conda-store's dependency graph is very large, as is usual for modern open source projects. Hence, it's not practical to actively contribute back to all of those projects.

To aid in decision-making, the following projects are considered critical for conda-store and contributing to them is encouraged:

  • conda
  • conda-lock
  • conda-pack
  • conda-docker

While other project like FastAPI, and pyyaml (see the complete list of dependencies in pyproject.toml and on GitHub) are not deemed critical, contributions like opening issues and feature requests is encouraged. As direct users of these libraries, the conda-store development team is well-positioned to share feedback with upstream libraries.

Contribution guidelines​

A non-exhaustive list of good practices to follow when interacting with upstream libraries:

  • Always go through and follow the projects' contribution guidelines before engaging
  • Aspire to open high-quality and context-rich issues and pull requests (PRs)
  • Before contributing PRs, get community consensus on your requested feature or bug-fix, and the implementation strategies
  • Follow-up on your issues and pull requests diligently to ensure it does not go stale and create additional maintenance tasks for the upstream project
  • For critical projects, take the time to improve the documentation, expand the testing suite, help with triage, and other code-adjacent contributions that are equally important for the upstream project's overall health
  • Share attributions fairly while contribution, for example acknowledge code reviewers and advisors through GitHub's "co-authors" feature for PRs

License considerations​

When contributing to an upstream library for the first time, review the project's license. If you need to sign a "Contributor License Agreement" to be able to contribute, share this with conda-store development team to verify the terms.